


Star Light, Star Bright

by Darkarashi



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Clubbing, Danger Kink, Destiny, Double Penetration, Exhibitionism, F/M, False Pretenses, Fucking someone stuck in a wall, Home Invasion, Just kidding there's tons of plot, Kabeshiri, Knifeplay, Masturbation, Multi, Near Death Experiences, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Shaxx's race is left ambiguous on purpose, Stuck in the wall, Teasing, Threesome - F/M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, cause cayde-6 is a kinky fucker, if destiny wanted me to write about their story they should've written a story, light play, the canon exists solely to be abused
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-04-06 08:36:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 69,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14053092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkarashi/pseuds/Darkarashi
Summary: Star please don't burn out tonight.When you meet someone in a bar, it's rare that anything really ever comes of it. For most Guardians, in fact, the bar is pretty much the most constant part of their lives. Fighting, dying, getting back up - all of that loses its luster and the bar is a pretty good place to go to try and forget it. Or find something to drown yourself in.Except for one Warlock, who hardly ever goes to the bar, and seems to have a pretty in-considerably inconsistent relationship with being present when needed to be accounted for. Or at least, that's what Cayde-6 says of her when asked. A trickster, a scholar, and all in between, her story starts in the stars, and eventually, is writ there for what she finds, what she fights against and what she fights for.There's always something more to lose.





	1. Void-Light

The club was invitation only, Guardian only. Everyone got one invitation upon joining the Vanguard, a sort of “welcome to the club”. The newbie night was one of Cayde-6’s favorite nights to show up. Before any of the newbies really got to know him, or who he was. Still fresh, still untouched by the jaded air of the old Guardians.

And it was even better when they didn’t know who he was. His Hunters all knew him, but the new warlocks and titans didn’t necessarily always know.

He lived for that next-morning recognition, when they’d come to make their report to Ikora or Zavala and see him standing there, cocksure and at ease, and they all tried to figure out just what it was that they should do. Generally nothing.

The club was loud, the music thumping, the drinks flowing.

Guardians couldn’t die, so alcohol poisoning was really not an issue. Drugs, drinks, whatever. It wasn’t necessarily condoned by the Vanguard, or by anyone in the Last City, but it happened regardless. Newbie Night was one of those nights where most people didn’t really bring out the best stuff, just so they’d not shy away. This was more exclusive than most of the other places they’d usually end up going.

Cayde-6 didn’t much care. He was sitting and he had found a new Warlock to play with. She was a pretty thing, a human with short blue-black hair, her fingers cradling a tumblr of smokey whiskey. Halfway in his lap, halfway draped across the cushioned couch, she was wearing the simple clothes of someone who hadn’t been around too terribly long. The longer you’ve been around, the better your gear looks. That’s just how it went.

“So, first time here, huh?” Cayde asked, his fingers skating along her shoulder, flickers of Solar-Light dancing across his hand. “What do you think?”

“Haven’t had whiskey this good in a long while, honestly.”

He laughed, orange light flickering behind his mouth-plate.

Cayde watched her eyes dip to the light, and smiled at her. An answering smile came across her face for a moment before she caught herself and turned away, a blush touching her cheeks.

“Exos new to you?”

It was hard to tell from _when_ Guardians came from in the past. Some human Guardians were relatively “young”, counting from their death to now, and knew Awoken and Exo pretty well. Others were “old” and had never quite seen the heyday of the advent of Exos and the meeting of the Awoken.

“Far from it. Orange is just my favorite color,” she said, leaning away from him and grinning.

She took a sip of her whiskey and Cayde watched her carefully.

“Favorite color?” he parroted, grinning and letting a buzzy, rumbling laugh light his sensors anew.

“I’m not a complicated woman, I think orange is a really good color, and it looks nice when you laugh, don’t make fun.”

He held up a hand, shaking his head, leaning back, feigning absolute innocence.

“Sorry, sorry. I just don’t have people tell me that too often.”

She scoffed and took another sip. He watched her, slowly leaning back in, towards her. She mirrored his move, coming close and grinning crookedly at him. Her eyes were steely grey, but as the bright lights of the club washed over her face, flickers of violet caught in the grey.

“Void, huh?”

She grinned at him, and edged closer to him, reaching out to trace a finger down his chin-plate.

Cayde hummed as he felt her Light flickering at the edge of his, sparks of the Void dragging at him. The purple slivers in her eyes pulsed in time to the music. He tilted his head, eyes dipping to her lips. There was a bead of whiskey ornamenting her lower lip. Cayde found himself staring. His backlight flickered, tracing out his mouth plates. He couldn’t lick his lips, but he definitely wanted to taste that whiskey on her mouth.

Her head tilted opposite his and she came in closer to him. Cayde reached his arm out, looping it easily over her shoulders and gently tugging her closer. She moved languidly, shifting her body, throwing one of her legs over his, turning her shoulders towards him. Anticipating the next move, Cayde tilted his chin up, offering his mouth to her.

She swept in all at once, a rush of movement that had the servos in his chest whining, spinning up for –

Cold glass hit his mouthplate and he started. She had brought her glass up, slotting it perfectly between their mouths. Her lips were pressed to the other side of it, her eyes were lidded and Cayde burned a little brighter for her.

She grinned at him, and then quickly took her glass from his mouth and finished her whiskey all in one go.

“Gunna get another drink, fancy one, Hunter?” she said, tugging his cloak playfully as she stood.

“Oh…you know…” he equivocated, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “Maybe.”

He made himself comfortable on the couch, resting his arms across the back, and spreading his legs wide. Her eyes made a slow, longing journey down the length of his body, and her tongue peeked out to quickly lick her bottom lip.

Cayde felt _deliciously_ surveyed.

“Well then I’ll get a drink that we both can enjoy, and you can decide however you’d like.”

She winked at him, and then turned away. As soon as she was out of his sight, consumed by the crowd and crush of bodies, his Ghost appeared next to him, materializing out Light to hover near his shoulder. His Ghost’s single blue eye regarded him sternly for a moment before emphatically rolling and dematerializing once again.

“Hey! You can’t just do that, what’s that about, huh?”

His Ghost came back and looked towards where the other Guardian had walked off towards.

“If you don’t know, I’m not telling, I’m not going to ruin someone else’s fun,” his Ghost said cryptically, floating in front of his face before vanishing once again.

“Yeah, well thanks for the help, little Light _,”_ Cayde groused.

“Oh, excuse me?”

The other Guardian was back, two long glasses in her hands, each smoking slightly. The bright blue glow that emanated from the glasses mimicked the color of the Fallen’s ether supplies, and the smoke was a purely aesthetic choice from the bartender. This was a fancy enough bar to have such things.

It was also his favorite drink. Not that he expected this Warlock to know that.

“Ether on the Walls for us, huh, Warlock?”

“Well I was planning to drink them both unless you wanted one.”

He laughed and held a hand out, motioning for her to give him one.

“No, no, I’d hate to see good alcohol go to waste, come here then.”

She grinned, and came closer. Her path did not veer off to either side, she walked straight up to him, and then without any preamble or ounce of hesitation, straddled his hips, sinking down into his lap, pressing his drink to his waiting hand.

Cayde blinked once, looking between his drink and the Guardian in his lap.

“I am more than happy to get out of your lap if you would rather me not here, Hunter,” she said quietly, rising up so that she was not putting any of her weight on him. “I do not want to make you uncomfortable, but…you’ve not made any progress and I’m tired of waiting. I might live forever, but I don’t like waiting forever.”

He put his free hand on her thigh and pushed her back down into his lap, slouching down to give her a slightly better position on the couch. She grinned and took a sip from her drink, shifting only slightly to get comfortable on her new perch.

“By all means, settle in, Guardian,” he drawled, not moving his hand from her thigh and mirroring her sip.

Exo biology, if that was the word for it, was a fascinating thing. He could eat and drink despite not having a stomach, and he really didn’t want to think about what that meant, not when there was a void-touched Warlock in his lap, siphoning heat out of him with a surprising ease.

“So kind of you to offer, Hunter.”

She smiled at him, and her grey eyes shone with little flecks of Void-Light that she was quick to blink away.

“Sorry, still getting used to that,” she said demurely, looking away and reaching up to scrub the heel of her palm across her eyes.

Cayde reached up to cup her chin in his hand for a moment before brushing some of her hair out of her face. She leaned into the touch, turning her cheek up to meet his fingers. His eyes flickered for a moment, surprised by the movement. Her grin was infectious, and a laugh rumbled out of Cayde’s chest unbidden. There was some joke here, something he was missing, but her smile was beguiling and she was in his lap, so he really couldn’t find himself to care about the punch line.

“It takes some doing, for sure. Void was never much my speed, Solar’s just too fun,” he said, tapping his chest.

She pressed her palm to where he tapped, and purred as the heat from his Light poured against her skin. Cayde sipped from his drink, delighting in the feel of their Light pulsing against each other. Hers was a deep abyss, a cold and dark void that opened up and consumed whatever of his Light touched hers. It reminded him of being too close to Ikora when she was channeling the void in combat, but the last time they had been in any sort of combat together had been…ages ago.

“I like the Void. It feels nice after so long, to just be _empty_ inside,” she said almost wistfully, her gaze going vacant for just a moment before she caught herself and quickly took a long drink from her glass.

Cayde watched her carefully. The words she had chosen were interesting, to say the least, but with her in his lap and the words “empty inside” rattling around in his brain-chips, he declined to speak any further and instead, polished off his own drink in one long pull. Because he heard empty inside and instinctively wanted to _fill_ the emptiness.

She was in his lap.

The drink. He finished the drink. Yep. That first.

The taste was familiar, a sweet-tart drink that masked the heavy amount of alcohol that was in it. He could feel his chest warming as the servos under his plates started whirring perhaps a touch too fast. Drunkeness in Exos was similar enough to how it worked in Humans and Awoken, and Cayde could feel the creeping edge of inebriation pressing on him.

The Warlock grinned at him and finished her drink, leaning back to put her now-empty glass on the closest table. She reached out for his glass, which he gladly relinquished because it meant that she – yeah, yeah she was – was going to lean back, and back, and back, stretching out away from him, until she was practically lying down on his legs.

Delicately, she put his glass down next to hers, and then shot him a devilish grin as she stayed where she was, squeezing him with her thighs and winking up at him as she stretched her hands out. It was entirely exaggerated, he knew that. He knew the way she rolled her shoulders and arched her back in a _very_ nice display, was just a _display_ but that did not stop the heat from venting out around his neck with a quick _hisss_.

She smirked and slowly came back up, reaching for Cayde, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck and rolling her hips against his.

He had to blink spots out of his vision as her Light dappled spots of _cold_ against his Solar-presenting Light. A chill raced down his spine, and he swore under his breath as more heat vented out of one of the slots by his neck. Her thumb traced the vent’s opening, and Void-Light wrapped cold fingers around the wake of her touches, leaving the metal there chilled against the heat of Solar-Light that burned in him.

The only thing Cayde could think to do ( _how was it that Warlocks made this Light manipulation shit look **easy**_ ) was to reach up and cup the back of her arm and send fractals of Solar-Light chasing up her skin.

Her reaction was a delicious one.

Her eyes fluttered closed and her chin tilted up. He watched the flickers of Solar-Light that made it to her shoulder still, and then turn a deep purple before guttering out. Did she know she was doing that? Was it a conscious effort on her part, or was this just… _her_?

Cayde didn’t know.

Cayde really didn’t care.

He swore again, louder this time, as her hand trailed down his chest, leaving an aching empty cold _Void_ where her touch had been, and now was not. His own Light rushed back in, searingly hot after the cold of absence.

“I like that feeling, don’t you? That crush of _feeling_ when the Void is pushed out, how it’s almost _too much_ but still _not enough_ …”

Her voice trailed off, and she took a deep breath in. Cayde watched her chest move, dropping his gaze down to the swell of her breasts, and unabashedly watching. She had a _great_ rack.

“I, uh, mmmhm,” Cayde said, the pinnacle of eloquence as her hips rolled against his. “I am familiar with the... _shit_ , Warlock how the fuck?”

Her Void-Light crushed against his body in time to her hips movement, pushing the Solar-Light out of his chest and hips, leaving an aching void in its place that his Solar-Light rushed to fill again as soon as her body pulled away from him. His vents hissed loudly as everything in him ached for more. More, goddamnit, _more_.

She stopped moving, breathless, blinking spots of purple Void-Light out of her eyes again. There was a blush on her cheek and neck, and sweat stuck her hair to the back of her neck.

“Oh, _fuck_ , that was good, Hunter.”

Cayde shivered, grabbing her hips and pulling her hard against him.

“Not done, not done yet,” he growled at her, sending flares of Solar-Light up her sides, outlining her in shimmering flames.

“Well c’mon then. Let’s get another drink, yeah?” she said, laughing and picking his hands off of her hips.

She delicately patted out the flames, her Light repairing the inconsequential damage to her clothes that Cayde’s fire had created. Carefully, she dismounted Cayde’s lap, backing up and nodding towards the bar.

“I was rather comfortable where we were.”

“I’m buying.”

She grinned at him, winking and turning towards the bar. She didn’t look back to see if Cayde was following her, just sashayed away from him. He watched her move, hunger gnawing at him.

Her Light flickered at the edge of her clothes, and he watched a triangle of fabric vanish, exposing her low back, all the way up her long, lean muscled spine. Her strut carried on, except now Cayde could watch the muscles up her back work.

“Now there’s an attractive prospect,” he muttered to himself, getting up off the couch to chase after her.

He came up next to her at the bar and put one of his hands on her back, sliding it down until his palm was on the bared skin of her low back. She turned just far enough to shoot him a glance out of the corner of her eye, grinning at him, before giving her attention back to Terra-53, the bartender for the evening.

Terra-53 brought two shot glasses, shot an unreadable glance to Cayde, who quickly shook his head at her. She knew the game he liked to play, and while she did not usually ruin them for him, he always felt like he had to check in on her again. She rolled her eyes, served the shots, and went to the next customer.

“Shots, huh?”

The Warlock looked at him, grabbed both of the shots and downed them both, one after the other in quick succession. She threw her head back and exhaled heavily, a blush starting up on her cheeks.

“Mhm, there’s the _Hunger_ that comes after. You want some?”

“Love some.”

She chuckled, got Terra-53’s attention and ordered four more shots. Terra-53 poured the shots without asking any further questions, and slid them toward the two of them. The Warlock caught her two shots easily, lifted one in a silent cheers to Terra-53 and downed it with a wink to the Exo bartender.

“Better catch up, Hunter,“ the Warlock said, bumping her shoulder against Cayde’s. “Would hate for me to have to make this a betting game.”

“You a betting woman?”

“Since the day I was reborn, Hunter, since the day I was reborn.”

She picked up her shot, tapped it twice on the bar, extended it in a cheers to Cayde that he didn’t reciprocate, and finished her shot. He watched her carefully, wondering, briefly, if he had perhaps made a mistake. But…

“Bet I can hold my liquor better than you, young’un,” Cayde drawled, slinging back his two shots and winking at her.

“Oh, you’re fucking _on_ , Hunter.”

The night got a little hazy after that point, even for him. Drinks came, and the Warlock paid for them, on her tab, and Cayde didn’t care to protest too much, because free alcohol was the best alcohol and everyone knew that. She also pressed herself against him, sliding her shoulder in front of his, leaning against his body, letting their Light play against each other, which was getting more and more out of hand as more drinks came.

They purloined stools from less alert Guardians, laughing, clutching their drinks to their chests. Cayde had an arm over her shoulder, and she was pressing herself to him, one of her legs slung over his thigh. There was an emanating coldness from where her leg rested on his, but if he drank more, the heat would come back. He was pretty sure. Probably.

Why did he care, again?

Oh right, he fucking didn’t.

She was deftly plucking at his clothes, rubbing her fingers down the seams of his clothing, sending little fractals of Void-Light skittering across his chest-plate. He groaned when her mouth pressed against his neck, venting all the excess heat out.

He finished the drink in his hand, barely tasting it. She mirrored him, finishing her own drink and relaxing against him.

“I’m still ahead by…three shots, Hunter.”

“No…no ‘m not behind.”

“You are so behind. I’m winnin’!”

Her triumph was infectious. He found himself laughing along with her, tightening his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. She stood up, and tugged him along with her.

“Let’s…find somewhere else to sit. Somewhere private. Know a place in here?”

Cayde made a _very_ affirmative sound under his servo’s whirring, took her hand in his and walked, with purpose, towards the darkest corner of the bar. There was a booth there, hidden from most everyone’s gaze, and Cayde had fond memories of those seats. Very fond.

The Warlock laughed and came easily behind him. Her hands pressed to his hip, finding the loops of his belt and tugging.

Cayde ducked into the darkness of the corner booth, pulling the Warlock with him. She slid neatly into his arms, turning and pressing a messy set of kisses across his jaw and neck, peppering him with flashes of Void-chill.

To call the place he had pulled them into a booth was a little misleading, it was a single oversized seat that could fit two (or three, if you tried really hard) Guardians in it quite comfortably. Sometimes Cayde would just go there to sit and listen to the world around him, the club’s music, the sights and sounds of a gathering of Guardians.

This wasn’t one of those times. He collapsed down into the chair and she followed him, climbing into his lap as soon as he was even a little bit settled.

“Did you want your drinks here, now?” Terra-53’s voice said from the entrance to the little enclave.

The Warlock had her hands on his hips, pulling him up against her, her mouth sealed over one of the vents on his neck, and Cayde had to blink shimmering Void-Light out of his eyes and look to Terra-53. The Warlock rolled her hips against his, her teeth biting at some of the wires in his neck, tugging on the _incredibly_ sensitive wiring, and then soothing the answering self-defensive surge of Solar-Light through him with a tongue coated in Void-Light.

“Uh-h-hh, yes. Please. Two, uh, _Warlock_ please!” Cayde panted, his head dropping back against the seat as the Warlock’s tongue pressed into one of the vents on his neck, her teeth finding the edge of the plate and biting down.

Anything else he wanted to say was lost in a slightly more screeching than anticipated shriek of static as she nipped at one of the wires and pulled hard enough for Cayde’s vision to momentarily  go grey and white at the edges.

“ _FUCK!_ ” he managed to gasp out as he wrested control of his vocal box back from the precipice of pleasure.

Terra-53 scoffed, and left.

Her mouth didn’t leave his neck, and she pushed him harder against the back of the seat. Her knuckles dug into his hip-plates, the sensitive thin electronic skin between the plates resisting her touch but sending a cascade of sensory information through him. Exos were sensitive, despite being made mostly of metal, with all their exposed wiring and the thin fiber-weave between the plates that formed their skin was constantly on alert for any sort of touch.

This though - the ebb and flow of hot and cold, her body against his, the way she moved all in one long, sinuous, controlled movement to press herself against him – this was something different.

The Warlock was _good_ at this. She was pushing his every button in the exact order he liked. He couldn’t catch his thoughts fast enough to ask her how she knew how to do this, if she had had an Exo lover before she had been reborn, because her fingers were at the clasps of his clothes, peeling them open just far enough to get her hands some more working room, so her mouth could get some purchase further down his neck and chest.

She hummed something he couldn’t really make sense of, it wasn’t the Common speech of the Last City, but he knew the words enough to follow the meaning. Maybe. It didn’t matter because the music was too loud for him to hear her properly anyway.

Her lips suckled the edge of one of his plates near his shoulder as one of her hands grabbed hard at his waist, pulling him against her chest, Solar-Light pulsing against her body. The angle of her mouth against his neck and shoulder made it impossible for him to really reciprocate, his head was angled away so she could bite at his neck, but he could grab her back, pull her tight against him, rock his hips against hers, pull whatever pleasure out of her he could.

Cayde grabbed her ass with one hand, kneading and guiding her hips’ movements to his. His other hand skated up her ribs, his fingers fanning out until his thumb brushed her nipple through the layers of fabric. She sighed against his neck’s wiring, one hand wrapping around the back of his neck, and the other reaching back to move his hand to the bare triangle of skin down her back. Deftly, carefully, and with _entirely_ too much self-assuredness, she carefully guided his hand under the hem of her pants, sighing happily when he took the invitation with gusto.

He pulled her closer to him, his fingers sliding across her bare skin, a groan ripping out of his chest as Void-Light poured across his shoulder. Her teeth hit the blue plate that formed the top of his chest-plate and dug in as hard as blunt human teeth could dig into metal. Fractals of Void-Light skittered across and down the plate, along the inside of the plate, chilling wires with flickers of the Void itself before it was gone again.

His moan stuttered as his vocal box fritzed out in pleasure. His chest heaved against her mouth and he _felt_ her grin. She was so confident, assured, and the little movements her lips made against his plates and wires made it really hard to think through how much she knew about Exos or how old she was. He just really liked it.

She ground against his body, moving her mouth from his chest back to his neck, and pressed a messy kiss to the exposed wires under his chin. Cayde’s eyes rolled and his chest heaved.

“That – _fuck_ – Warlock, I know this-kt is-ktn’t your firs-kt rodeo but you gotta give me s-ktome breathing s-ktpace.”

His vocal box was shorting out as her mouth worked delightful sin across his plates and wires.

She pulled back from him, rolling her hips and smirking at him. Cayde’s world spun around him as he stared at her. His chest heaved, and when he looked down he saw his shirt gaping open. She had gotten more of his shirt open than he had originally expected. Light fingers and deft work. Fucking hells.

She dragged fingers down his exposed plates and he had to take a moment to try and get his thoughts back in order. His vision went a little static-y around the edges and he shuddered.

Terra-53 came back, holding two drinks in her hands. She set them on the small table next to the two of them, and then put her hands on her hips, staring at the two of them. Cayde really wished he could bring himself to care.

Oh wait.

No he didn’t.

“On your tab?”

“Yeah, please Terra, thank you,” the Warlock said waving a hand back over her shoulder, her gaze not leaving Cayde.

The drinks were a deep purple, with shimmers of silver flickering through the liquid. She picked up both of them and pressed one to Cayde’s waiting palm. He blinked and looked down at the drink. He was…very drunk. Very drunk and this next drink was maybe not the best idea. Or it was. Free alcohol was free alcohol.

“Oh, you don’t gotta, Hunter. I’ll take ‘em both. Don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t wanna, uh, _uh_ , fuck, holy _shit_ , fuck, uhnnn-“

He grinned, victorious, his metallic thigh pressing up against the crux of her legs, rocking her back and forth. She rolled her hips, her head lolling back, and her eyes fluttering shut. Cayde put a hand on her hip, holding her still so he could keep pulling her along to the tempo he had chosen. She didn’t try and move away, and as she caught onto the rhythm that Cayde wanted, she matched him. Her chest heaved and soft, gentle mewls poured from her mouth.

Cayde found himself sipping from his drink as she rocked on top of his thigh. He didn’t even have to keep moving her at this point. She had taken the lead on her pleasure, biting her lip, reaching down to put a hand on his leg, her eyes closing in pleasure.

A blush had deepened on her cheek and throat, and the grin on her face was really something self-satisfied and pleased. He liked it.

In the deep shadows of the alcove, he could barely see the color differential of her blush, but as an Exo, and as someone burning up inside with Solar-Light, he could feel the heat pouring off of her body. She was burning up, and the Void was consuming the fire as fast as she made it. The Void _pulled_ the Solar-Light out of him, and his Light was more than happy to supply more to feed the Void.

He watched her carefully, exactingly, precisely, taking extensive mental notes about everything she did. Every movement. Every sigh. Every slightest twitch of her body when he tensed his leg and tilted slightly forward, every bitten back moan, everything. He watched it like a man starving and presented with a feast. He drank his fill of the alcohol and of the sight in front of him.

She stopped for a moment, taking her drink off the side table and downing it all in one long go.

When her drink was done, she threw the glass at the floor. The sound startled Cayde, but she swept in to press her mouth to his mouth-plate before he could say anything, moaning openly when he grabbed her ass and crushed her against his chest. Her lips, her tongue, moved against his mouth-plate, sending Void-Light skittering across his plates. He had to pull away, finish his drink, get that last little bit of alcohol down before dropping his glass back down onto the table.

He buried his hands in her hair, pulling her close, crushing his mouth-plates against her mouth, grabbing at everything of her. He needed. He needed. He needed her so keenly that he felt her Light sparking against his body and his responded in kind without even him having to put any effort into it. He ached. He needed.

She reciprocated hungrily, both of her hands framing his neck, her thumbs on either side of the heavy cording and wiring that formed his throat. Desperately, wantonly, needily, she keened against his plate when he pulled her hair and pushed his hand back down the back of her pants again. Light fizzled at the seat of her pants, a brief flash of illumination as she dismissed the fabric over her crotch, leaving her bare and open for him.

“Oh. Oh _hell_ yeah,” Cayde mumbled against her mouth, arching his hips up against her.

His own Light sparked, freeing his cock, opening up the protective plate that his cock usually hid behind, so that it could spring free. To any onlookers, not that he expected there to be any, there would be nothing that looked amiss, but with a hissed curse and a careful readjustment, the Warlock slid down onto his cock.

Cayde’s every last processor clicked and restarted with a high whine. His vocal box made a high moan for him, grinding out a sloppy, stressed sound. The vents that lined his shoulders hissed, steam pouring into the air around him. The pressure in his chest barely dipped down at all, rising up all over again as she _sighed_ and melted into him. Onto him. Against him.

He fucked her slow, dropping his hands to her thighs, pulling her down against his leisurely thrusts. She folded forward, pressing her forehead against his shoulder, biting at the plate, mouthing at the wire underneath it.

It wasn’t enough. It was good, it was brilliant, it was everything he wanted but it wasn’t enough. He was fucking some pretty stranger in the back of one of his second favorites of bars, drunk and pleasantly a little out of his mind. The pressure was back in his chest, overwhelming even as a series of vents down his back opened and hissed, trying to relieve the pressure building as all of the machinery in his chest moved into overdrive.

He turned his head to touch his mouth-plates against the tender, soft skin of her neck and, in lieu of biting, a small spark of Solar-Light jumped from his mouth-plate to her skin. She yelped, tensing for a moment, before relaxing down onto his cock. Her chest heaved, her mouth dropped open and she moaned brokenly as he rolled his hips under her.

He felt Void-Light dragging at his cock, instead of sapping his Light away, it pulled him closer. This Warlock was a _saint_ with her Light, dragging his Solar-Light into her through his cock. He had…it had been a long, long time since he had fucked anyone who could do that with their Light, and with the alcohol, and the way she so clearly knew how to work an Exo up, despite the very different biology that formed them,  maybe they weren’t as new as-

“I, _fuck-uhhhn_ , Warlock…I gotta know…You can’t ju-“

Her Ghost popped into existence to her left, chirping to get her attention.

With a groan, she picked her head up off of his shoulder and turned to her Ghost. Her hips didn’t stop moving against him, and despite her attention diverting to her Ghost, her fingers still working down the edges of his plates, plucking at the wires that were a little too close to the surface.

“What, Lask?” she drawled, her eyes blinking closed when Cayde popped his hips up for a brief moment, thrusting into her with a self-confident grin.

He could play the same game. She might not have vents but she did blush, and the blush did get deeper and he did feel more slick rush down his cock as she tensed for a moment. She sighed, rolling her eyes and looking back to him with a wry grin.

“Ikora would like to talk to you. Shall I put her through? Or are you busy?” her Ghost’s tinny voice reported, looking between Cayde and the Warlock.

She rolled her eyes and rode Cayde lazily, pushing herself up and dropping herself back down his cock. Cayde’s eyes fluttered shut and he grabbed her hips hard. Really, Ikora had the worst fucking timing, and her little Warlock was certainly going to have to explain to her why she didn’t answer when Ikora called. Surely it’d be a hard conversation, maybe even an embarrassing one but –

“Yeah. Yeah, put her through,” she said, putting her hand on his chest and pushing him back against the seat when he tried to get up.

Void-Light poured from her, lighting up the small area and pinning him in place. Cayde stared up at her, his mouth-plates slack, and the orange backlight for his mouth blazing bright. Oh she wasn’t serious. Oh she wasn’t going to do this.

 _Hells_.

She did not stop the slow, steady rocking of her hips. In fact, now the Void was doing the _thing_ again, creating a maddening ebb and flow through him as her hips moved to the beat of the music he couldn’t give enough of a shit about to care about hearing.

She grinned at him, lifting an eyebrow and winking at him. Cayde felt all of his internal machinations click to a stop as his fireteam’s Warlock’s voice came through her Ghost.

“Warlock Squall?”

_Fuck._

This was. Ikora was on the other side of the open line through the Warlock’s Ghost. His friend. His fireteam member. His longest friend. One of his best friends. She was on the other end of the Ghost, and if he made too much noise he’d not be able to look Ikora in the face at the Vanguard table because he would be more than a little nervous about that. Nervous and aroused and nervous because he was aroused.

It was.

He felt.

This was.

 _Fuck_.

“Squall, where are you? I need your report, you never filed it and there’s a translation another one of the Hidden brought in that I’m not certain on. I need you to come in and run drills with the new Voidlocks, you’ve had more than enough time to re-acclimate after changing over.”

The Warlock rolled her eyes, but still worked herself up and down Cayde’s cock. He diverted all power away from his vocal box, trying to keep himself as quiet as possible. The music, the heavy beat of the club hopefully covered the sound that his servos made as she ground herself against his hip-plates.

“I’m at that one obnoxious club everyone blathers about. The one that has Newbie Night, and Terra-53 is serving, you know how much I like her. Figured I’d avoided it long enough and the Hunter’s Haunt was mostly empty. Yeti-7 and Keldrin were both too busy with their work to want to run Crucible with me and I was bored.”

Cayde stared, his mouth-plates’ backlight dimming. He was just…she was talking about these things with the cadence of someone who was very, intimately knowledgeable of what was happening. Not some new Guardian. He looked away, closing his eyes for a moment as she pulled his Solar-Light from him, into her, through his cock, trying to remember what it was that she had said against his plates earlier.

He had a sudden feeling it was important. Like he should have been paying attention and cottoned on to something specific about her in that moment, but goddamn she was circling her hips and he was trying to keep his mouth _closed_.

“Get back here and file your report properly, Warlock. And if you see Cayde-6, tell him that Zavala is looking for him. He likes going to those events, and for the life of me I do not know why.”

“Of course, Ikora. Squall, out.”

Her Ghost twitched, looked at Cayde briefly, and then vanished into motes of Light. A sigh of relief rushed out of Cayde’s voice box, his vents hissing all at once as the relief rushed through him. Ikora wouldn’t know. He didn’t have to explain anything to her. It was fine. He was safe.

The Warlock rocked her hips against his, shivering. He felt the yawning emptiness of the Void reach into him and his Solar Light _roared_ , spearing heat and pleasure back down his spine, through his gut, down his legs. His hands fucking shook, and he had to try to keep everything together for a little bit longer so he could really revel in it.

“Ikora would like to speak to you, Cayde. You should message her. I have a report to file. And _newbies_ to hassle,” the Warlock said with a wry grin.

“Fuck-kt me, you kt-n-n-ew,” he grit out as she toyed with his Light easily. So easily. With the ease of someone who has had their Light and tempered it time and time again over more than just a few months.

She grinned.

“You’re Cayde-6, anyone with eyes knows you.”

“It’s-kt newbie nig-kt-ht. I was-kt – uh _hhn_ s-ktop _that_ -kt I’m trying-kt to chas-ktise you,” he moaned as she pushed his Solar-Light out of him again, letting it cascade back through him, lighting up everything behind his plates with maddening cold and then delirious heat.

“I’m a touch immune to that, Hunter. Doesn’t quite sit when Ikora does it, and _you’re_ not my Vanguard.”

She rolled her hips against him like he was an unruly Sparrow and she was coming into the last turn on the Infinite Descent. He blinked motes of Solar Light out of his eyes and tried to come up with a pithy rejoinder to that, but his brain-chips were scrambling to parse how good it felt to have her – have her like that.

He tried to speak but his voice-box was overcome with a rush of cold that emanated from her fingers as she ran them down the exposed wires of his throat. Cayde’s eyes rolled and the major vent down the center of his chest opened and _hissed_ loudly. A rumble of static rushed out of his throat.

“Wh- **h** -o ar-r-re y-you?” he finally grit out.

She laughed, and leaned in to press her mouth to his. He reciprocated without even thinking about it, reaching up to cup the back of her neck and pull her tighter to him trying to drink down every last mote of Void-Light that hummed in her body. The Solar-Light in his chest felt like it was burning hot enough to start melting his plates and the only little bit of relief he had was the chill of her Void against his body.

It was all building to a crescendo and he couldn’t catch his thoughts, let alone whatever it was that passed for breath in the chests of Exos, and Cayde was more than happy to drown in the feeling of her lips on his plates, and her Light against his.

“See you, good Hunter.”

And with that, she dismounted him.

She just left.

The Light flashed once and her clothes were returned to her. She took a moment to stand in front of him, staring at him. Cayde spread his legs wider, showing off, and also trying to see straight. He was half into his clothes, his shirt unzipped and gaping open, his cloak halfway off his shoulders, his cock jutting up proudly from his open pants, leaking pre and covered in her slick. There were, vanity of vanities, two strips of illuminating running lights up either side of his cock, flickering bright orange.

Cayde settled his hands on his hips and looked at her, blinking proper sight back into his eyes. His chest heaved, his vents working overtime as the Solar-Light in him burned everything up. She bit her lip, staring hungrily at him, flecks of Void-Light in her eyes glowing brightly. He looked.

Really good.

He knew that. He looked good, he knew it, she knew it, and he was more than a little turned on by the fact that she had played him so well. Honestly, if she just came back into the chair, into his lap, on his cock, he’d probably forgive her for playing him and then leaving him not completely satisfied.

Maybe.

If she just -

She shook her head and turned away, ducking out of the booth and quickly leaving. Cayde took a moment to collect himself, looking down at his mussed clothes and aching cock, scoffing under his breath and slowly, slowly, got himself put back together and rose. He left the booth, trying not to think too hard about that Warlock, despite all of his servos whining and clicking and building pressure back up behind his chestplates once again.

Well he tried that until he looked up and saw her leave out of one of the side doors, proper armor flickering onto her, but she was out of the door too fast for him to see just what her armor looked like and what shaders she had decided were _hers_. But he knew it was her.

He found himself following after her. He wanted to know who she was.

He needed to. She knew who he was. He had to know who she was.

He needed to know because it was rare that anyone managed to play him like that and she had been so careful to avoid giving him _anything_ he could use to think she was a Warlock in good standing with the Vanguard. And she was hot as _fuck_ to boot. Clever and hot was a particular sort of impossible to deny.

Cayde-6 needed to know who the fuck that Warlock was.

He pushed through the crush of dancers, bodies grinding against him, hands reaching for him, desperate sighs of attraction and arousal spilling from a dozen mouths. It was late in the night, drinks had been flowing, and Terra-53 didn’t believe in light drinks. Cayde’s Light practically poured off of him in sheets, he could feel it resonating off of the other Guardians, reflected back against his plates and fiber-weave skin, setting all of his nerves on fire.

If he stopped and let it all sink in, he’d never leave. He could just drown in the sensations of this, and forget the Warlock and the way that she had made him feel, even momentarily, but then…none of these Guardians pushed at his Light the way she had. And he really, truly, wanted to know

Cayde had to shrug off the touches, the whispered promises of everything he could’ve wanted – because they weren’t the Warlock he was looking for and right now he was real fixated - and doggedly follow the path the Warlock took.

His hand hit the door handle and he escaped into the cool night air of the Last City. There was the sound of quick-moving footsteps to his right, too subtle for just anyone to hear, but he could because he was just _great_ at his job. Cayde turned, and caught the edge of movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned, because there was really only one possible person for that to be and moved after them.

Well, staggered. Out in the cold air, which should be sobering, especially with his Solar-Light pulsing against his plates, pushing him forward, towards her, he was still _ridiculously_ drunk. He stumbled to the side, catching himself on the wall before getting his legs beneath him and moving forward.

Really, honestly, completely, he needed to know where she was. Who she was. He turned the corner sharply, already swaying, tripping over his feet.

“H-Hey-kt!” he called out. “S-kt-quall!”

He saw the Warlock – it was her, he knew it was her, the same person who had just fucked him in the bar and then left without giving him her name. Her back was to him. He could see the way her shoulders ticked in recognition, and before he could really get his eyes to focus properly, she was bolting, sprinting for the fastest way away from him, her armor and equipment brightening as she transmatted them back off of her. She wasn’t going to let him see her armor. Not right now.

Clever fucking Guardian.

Stupid fucking Warlocks and their stupid shitty quick thinking.

It was probably the most attractive thing about them, before the clothes started coming off.

Cayde gave chase, he really didn’t have a choice, and unfortunately for the Warlock, he was a Hunter – _the_ Hunter. The Hunter Vanguard. Closing distance with her was not really particularly difficult, all things considered. He might be drunk, but she was too, and she was not as quick-footed as he was. Even if he did clip his hip on something in the alleyway that she had managed to avoid, he was still better at this than she was.

He rushed up on her.

She shot a glance over her shoulder at him, her helmet sparking at her neck, vanishing, denying him the ability to see what her equipment was as her Light warped around her.

“Oh s-kt- _hit!_ ”

Warlocks might not be as fast as Hunters.

But Warlocks could _Blink_.

She prepared for a dive, the Void-Light clustering around her body, rushing for the wall in front of the both of them, one of the barriers that delineated the wards of the Last Cities, something that would take him quite a long while to get around. She’d get away if she got through the wall. He would lose her and any chance of seeing her again. It’d be –

Cayde dove as she did, reaching out, grabbing for her ankle.

The Light wrapped around her, and Cayde pulled his own Light back, trying to keep her _here_. It was a desperate bid, one that really had no reason to work. He pulled, the Light flared, and he hit the ground in a pretty undignified heap.

Shaking his head, trying to clear it, he picked himself up off the ground. No one was around. He was good.

A Ghost chirped at him angrily.

“Are you _serious_ , Cayde?”  Squall’s voice snapped at him, the Ghost-shell spinning madly.

He looked up. The Warlock’s legs kicked emphatically at the wall she was stuck in. Oh yeah. She was definitely stuck in the wall, her hips and legs on _this_ side of the wall, while her torso and head was definitely on the _other_. He stared, looking between where the Warlock was and where her Ghost was glaring at him.

“What?” he asked, brushing his knees off and slowly approaching the Warlock.

“I’m in the _fucking wall_ what do you mean “what”, Hunter?”

Her legs kicked, one of her knees hitting the unyielding concrete and steel of the wall. A thin band of Light wreathed her waist, where the wall was being pushed back and away from her body, and from the other side of it, he could hear her fists beating against the concrete. She definitely was stuck. Pretty well. The Light was the only thing keeping the wall from bifurcating her and making for a Very Cranky Ghost as she waited to revive.

As it was, she only had to wait for her Light to recharge enough to Blink again.

He probably had enough time, if he _ran,_ to get around to where she was stuck and really get a good look at her, but…but…

Carefully, reverently, gently, he approached her and put a hand on her hip, sliding his palm down her thigh. She stilled. His thumb carefully traced down the cleft of her ass, pressing at the fabric of her pants before pulling away quickly, like she had burned him. But he was the one with the Solar-Light and his hand wasn’t even a little bit cold.

“I, uh, Warlock-kt, I,” he stammered, taking a step back from her, realizing what he had been doing and knowing that it honestly was probably not comfortable to be stuck like she was.

And he was just feeling her up.

Her Ghost looked at him, blinking slowly, just once.

Her toes hit the ground, and she delicately pushed her hips up, angling herself just ever so delightfully in front of him, that Cayde really couldn’t be blamed for staring at her, really, no, he couldn’t be blamed because that _looked_ like an invitation, not a Warlock trying to get out of the position she was in.

“I’m gunna be stuck here a while, Cayde.”

She was. She had to wait for the Light to come back to her fully, and if she was having to use some of it to keep the wall she was in from crushing her. For at least a few minutes, at least, she was…stuck. In a wall. In front of him.

There was a high whine coming from somewhere in his chest, and the pressure was back again. He was very much, okay, the Warlock had an amazing ass, and he was still worked up and when he stepped up behind her and pressed his hips to her ass, her Ghost chirped encouragingly at him, and the Warlock spread her legs wide, before sweeping one of her legs behind his, locking him in place behind her.

He braced a hand on the wall, rocking his hips experimentally, just once, against her.

Light flashed as she transmatted away that same piece of her pants, and as much as she could manage to do with her hips restrained, pushed herself back against him. Cayde cursed under his breath, wildly trying to find some better phrase to use other than the long, agonized “Fu-u-u-u-u-ck-t” that spilled from his vocal box.

“C’mon, Hunter. C’mon. You wanna? Hate that I left you, you know,” her Ghost purred in his ear, the little Light pressing up against his neck, nudging his head down so he had to look at the goddamn visual delight that was her naked ass and pussy pressing up against the front of his lucky pants.

Real lucky pants.

Cayde pressed his horn to his forearm, trying to think through the pros and cons of fucking this halfway-through-the-wall-Warlock, but it was really fucking distracting when she kept moving her hips against him, and her Ghost kept sending little tendrils of Void-Light flickering across his neck. He put a hand on her hip, trying to still her so he could think through this, but it didn’t really work because his stupid fucking traitorous hand reached down to pull her against him as best he could when she was stuck in the fucking _wall_.

He buried his face in the crook of his elbow, resting his entire forearm against the wall, a clenched fist his only modicum of restraint.

He really, really shouldn’t do this.

Which was, of course, absolutely why he was going to do it.

The relief that flushed through him at the realization had the front of his own pants vanishing in a bright flash of transmit-Light. He didn’t care, not really, because there was never going to be a chance to experience something like this ever again, and the _novelty_ of it was almost as intoxicating as the however many drinks he had downed on her tab.

“I s-kthould pay y-ou back-t for thos-kt-e drinks-t,” he mumbled as he maneuvered his cock into place.

He heard a laugh from her Ghost, and the little Light pressing up against the back of his neck, pushing him forward, and he started thrusting without really even trying to think about it. It felt good. New.

There was something to be said for a new experience after as long as he’d been alive. And this newness. Oh it was good, really, really good. New was good. He chased new as much as he chased adventure and danger and exploration because it was all different ways of experiencing a _thrill_.

He pressed his horn against the wall, grabbed her hips and just…yeah, no, he fucked her. There wasn’t a kind or soft or gentle way to say it. He fucked her, holding her hips hard enough to leave bruises, losing himself in the pleasure. If he looked down, and watched himself fuck this mostly anonymous Guardian stuck halfway through the wall, he’d lose every modicum of control he had left in him. So he closed his eyes and just _felt_ instead.

The light that ran down his cock flashed rhythmically as he thrust into her. It was like a miniature light show, entirely for his own benefit as he pressed his cheek to the cool concrete of the wall and just…took his own pleasure. There was a decadence in this that cut both ways. He could not enjoy her in his own place. Or in the club. Couldn’t watch her face as he moved, couldn’t touch more of her. No, he was just fucking her, and her Ghost was peeking over his shoulder, chirping encouragingly at him, bumping against his neck, sending ripples of Void-Light down his neck.

It wasn’t like it had been in the club, where her Light had been pushing and pulling on his entire body, not anymore.

He was overheating, his shoulders and chest venting, but his shirt was closed and the heat didn’t have anywhere else to go. It was rare that he ever wanted his Light to not be Solar-aligned, rare that he wanted to find the chill of the Void and bring it up inside of him, but he needed relief and her little Ghost wasn’t enough coolness. He needed more.

Cayde was burning up, maddeningly overwhelmed by everything happening. He took a hand off of her hip, reaching up to try and pull the collar of his shirt open so he could vent some of this heat. His own Ghost nudged his hip and he could barely growl out a grinding “shirrrt-kt, _off_ ” to his eternal partner.

The shirt was transmatted away, to whatever place his clothes and armor went when he wasn’t wearing them but he couldn’t bring himself to care because _by the Light_ it felt so much better to have all this heat finally escaping him.

His vents _hissed_ , and before he could stop his traitorous fucking vocal box, a rattling, stuttering moan shuddered out of his mouth and he had to brace his forearm back against the wall, resting his cheek against it, burying his face in the crook of his elbow, thrusting harder now that he wasn’t overheating. Or because he wanted to overheat and now he could do it without feeling like he was going to ruin a favorite shirt.

The Ghost behind his neck pressed itself harder to the delicate wires there, sending chill Void-Light through his body. A shudder ran down his spine.

Exos couldn’t really hiccup but Cayde’s vocal box froze at the same time all of the servos in the upper part of his chest whined. The end result was a sound _startlingly_ like a hiccup that made his shoulders jump before everything got started back up properly.

“C’mon Hunter, _c’mon_ ,” the Ghost whispered in his ear, its voice a pale imitation of its Guardian’s tone.

Cayde opened his mouth, trying to say something because he had a good mouth on him and pithy responses were one of his _things_ , but the only thing that came out of his mouth was a roar of static. He just. He wanted. This was so good. So fucking good.

Solar Light flickered around his hand on her hip, and he smelled some of the fabric she wore burning. He could feel his body heating up regardless of the constant hiss of his vents. The pressure was building up faster than even his biggest vent could release. The heat was overwhelming, just beating through his chest. He thrust into her, not knowing if it would make the pressure lessen or make it worse, and honestly he didn’t really fucking give a damn.

He pressed the side of his face to the wall, grabbed on to her hip with his free hand, and just…just enjoyed himself.

The other Guardian was wet and open underneath him, in front of him, and she moved in time with him as best she could while she was _stuck in a wall_. If he had had the presence of mind to get his Ghost to record this, and if she had let him, he absolutely would have because he was standing in some back alley, shirtless but still wearing his cloak and most of his pants, fucking a Guardian who was stuck in the wall.

This was…really good.

He could feel the critical point starting up in his systems, the crushing feeling of overload, of everything in him winding up for blistering pleasure and an overload was imminent. His vocal box was fritzing out hard, static rolling out of his chest in waves.

It only took a sigh from her Ghost, and a wash of Void-Light across his shoulder plates for everything in him to shut down. He collapsed against the wall in front of him, his vision shorting out. His chest vented and heaved as he tried to force coherency back, but he had no control over what he felt first and there was…just so much.

She was wet and open around him, and he couldn’t help the sort of half-aware jerk of his hips as that particular bit of sensory data overwhelmed him. Her body was human and soft and warm around him. His hands carefully came back to rest on her hips, his entire body shuddering as his processes came back online.

He pressed his horn against the coolest part of the wall, shivering as the press of the cool air settled on his chest. He could feel it condensing, slicking the metal plates. It all…

Cayde sighed, his vocal box slowly making a recovery.

“Warlock…” he sighed fondly, slowly pulling out of her and kneeling down behind her.

He cast a furtive look over his shoulder, back down the alley. There was no one else there. He had time. Probably. He didn’t really care, actually. Even if he wanted to make this quick and just leave, because he was certain that someone would come along eventually, and probably before this poor Warlock managed to get herself out of the wall…he just wasn’t that sort of guy.

He got his.

Time for her to get hers.

“Cayde, we don’t really have time fo-“

Her Ghost had chirped in his ear, relaying her voice to him, but it had cut out rather abruptly as he slid two fingers into her. He watched her thighs tense, and with a chuckle he leaned against the back of her leg, lazily pumping his fingers in and out. With a rather self-satisfied hum, he twisted his hand just a little bit and pressed his thumb to her clit.

A tremble went through her entire body, and as much as she could, she arched back against his fingers, and he heard a high, plaintive whine from her Ghost. One of her boots stamped against the ground, and Cayde looked down at them, committing them to memory as best he could. If he couldn’t see the rest of her, couldn’t get a feel for what she looked like in her gear, he could at least be on the lookout for her boots.

Really, it was a thin possibility that she’d wear these boots anywhere near the Vanguard’s tower, and that he’d even notice to see her boots, but it was _something_ to give him even the thinnest hope that there could be something for him to chase down and have again.

He really wanted to do this again.

One of the great things of being an Exo and being a machine and really being just the sort of man who made sure he could do _certain things_ was that sometimes, his partner didn’t necessarily expect what he could do.

There was a low, deeply rumbling humming that started, her legs jumped, and her Ghost dissolved into motes of light with a pleased sounding moan.

Oh yeah, he could make his thumb vibrate. He chuckled to himself, and as the Light rematerialized his missing shirt and the part of his pants, he directed his Ghost to float to the other side of the wall. In his ear he heard her quiet panting and whimpering moans as his fingers worked slowly in and out of her.

Her hips, barely capable of any sort of movement, still rocked in time to his gentle fingering. The big muscle of her thigh shook, trembling uncertainly as he made his leisurely exploration of her pleasures. He grabbed the back of her left thigh, pushing her leg away, opening her up.

Tilting his head, he pressed his horn to the underside of her ass, letting the cool Void-Light that thundered through her body chill his cheek and horn press against his plates. It felt so good contrasted to the overwhelming, overbearing, over-everything _heat_ that was inside of her. As he continued, his Ghost fed him the sounds the Warlock was making, and Cayde reveled in it all.

She could barely move, and that made it all the better as his thumb continued its rumbly, vibration-y pleasure-work against her clit.

“C-Cayde! P- _lease_ , y’gotta, jus...I need… _please_ , please Cayde, please…” he heard her whimper, her voice cracking on the words.

He heard what he was reasonably certain was her palms hitting the wall as she struggled to try and demand more from him. Without her body being able to move, without being able to use body language to beg more from Cayde, to take more when she got frustrated with his slow pace, she was utterly at his mercy.

And for a Warlock, that had to be _misery_.

She couldn’t move, or take command of the situation and push for pleasure he wasn’t ready to give her.

His backlights all flickered as he laughed. She so desperately wanted more and he was in the delightful position of being able to maybe prolong it for as long as he cared to.

He pulled his thumb away and plunged his fingers deep into her, feeling around for that one, spongey spot deep within her, against her front wall, the one that made organic women -

There was a string of cursing in Eliksni, something desperate and filthy and _oh_ it had been Eliksni earlier too, hadn’t it, that made some sense. The Light around her hips flashed brightly and for a moment Cayde was afraid that she had lost her concentration, that she had been crushed, that he’d have to go find her Ghost and apologize profusely while the Traveler slowly gave her Light back enough for her body to reform.

But no, the Light got brighter and he was knocked back onto his ass with a loud clang.

“Pants _fucking_ off right now Cayde-6, don’t goddamn make me ask twice.”

The Warlock grabbed him by the shoulders, pinning him down against the ground. She straddled his hips and snarled down at him. Purple Void-Light warped the air around her, pointed towards him, not threatening, just a manifestation beyond her exact, precise control. She was wild-eyed, sweat slicking her temples and the back of her neck, her blue-black hair stuck down and up at odd angles, her chest heaving.

He took a moment to stare at her, his head dropping back against the ground as the Light warped around him, transmatting his pants off just as her hand pulled down to press against his chest, the Void-Light eating into the fabric of his shirt. Spires of _cold_ carved into his chest, digging through his plates and wires, clawing at his Solar-Light hard enough to fucking _hurt,_ but then she was sinking down onto his cock again and he really did not fucking give a damn.

Her fingers curled into claws as he slowly readjusted his legs and put his hands back on her hips.

She didn’t need his help.

No, she planted her hand firmly on the center of his chest, covering his main vent’s opening with a spread of her fingers and a decisive pulse of Void-Light, threw her head back, and rode him with a manic grin cracking her face.

She _took_ her pleasure this time, batting his hand off of her chest when he reached up to try and cup one of her breasts in a hand. Cayde dropped his hand to her hips, trying to guide her movements, planting one of his feet on the ground and starting his own rhythm.

Or he did, until she hissed his name and the Light she wielded wrapped around his wrists and pushed his hands away from her.

 _Fuck_ Warlocks were too good at that sort of shit.

His hands were pushed back until they were pinned against the ground and Void-Light sparked at his wrists, keeping him exactly where he was underneath her as she rode him again. It was desperate this time, a little more manic than it had been back in the booth, and he had the delight and pleasure of watching her chest heave and eyes roll as she took her pleasure from him.

As much as he wanted to let her have what she wanted, he wouldn’t be who he was if he didn’t push the limits of whatever boundaries he was given. He carefully, and slowly, patiently moved his legs until he had the position just about right. The Warlock hadn’t noticed, not that he expected to her as she worked herself up and down on top of him. She was consumed with her pleasure and taking it from him and he wanted to tempt more from her.

There was a moment where she stuttered, where she was blinking the stars of the Void out of her eyes as the moment of her orgasm started uncurling in her, oh, like any good Hunter, that was when he struck.

He planted his feet and _thrusted_. His hands were still stuck, trapped against the ground by her Void light, but he has use of his hips and thighs. And by the fucking _Traveler_ he was going to use them.

The Warlock’s back seized, her head snapping back and mouth dropping open in a soundless scream. He could see the Void-Light snapping through the air around her, as she lit up with Light overflowing. Her breath was stuck in the back of her throat as her orgasm screamed through her, and Cayde thrust into her with wild abandon.

She lost the pace she had been keeping atop him and Cayde, victorious and exultant, took charge. He bounced her atop him, both of his feet planted on the ground, hips completely off the ground, thighs and back working hard to see just how long he could prolong her orgasm for. She was so deliciously reactive, and he was exactly drunk enough to want nothing more than to see if he could make her brain leak right out of her ears on the heels of pleasure overwhelming.

Look, he wasn’t a complicated man. He just wanted his partner to have more fun and have more pleasure than they’d ever had before.

Also this Warlock had fucking gotten under his skin a little bit and this was still blisteringly new.

The Void-Light around his wrists was the only _cold_ thing on his body. His vents were all hissing, his processors and servos and everything in him going into overdrive once again, and with a ratcheting, screeching sound that ripped out of his voice box, Cayde’s body went into overload again. His hips locked in place and everything in him shut down and restarted anew. There was a single, high cry from the Warlock atop him, and then her spine turned to liquid and she slumped down against his chest.

Cayde’s legs went out from under him and with another rather undiginified clank, he dropped his hips back down to the ground.

A long moment of silence stretched out in the afterglow as she tried to catch her breath and Cayde tried real hard to get all of his processes back up and running in the interim. He slung an arm over her, the Void-Light around his wrists fracturing as soon as he pushed against it again, holding her against him gently. He wasn’t trying to be insistent, but she was resonating waves of cold, and that felt _really nice_ against his overheating chest.

She panted against his neck, shivering as aftershocks rumbled through her body. She slowly pushed herself off his cock, taking a long, deep breath to try and calm her racing heartbeat.

“Now, Warlock, I think we maybe should retire to-“ he started as soon as he was pretty confident that his voice wasn’t going to do anything embarrassing.

“See you, good Hunter. Thanks.”

“Oh _come on_!” he managed to get out as the Void-Light flared bright and purple around the Warlock atop him.

The last thing he saw of her was a Cheshire-cat grin as the Void overtook the Warlock, peeling her off of him, pulling him away. She vanished, and he was left lying on his back in some back alley of the Last City, too warm and a little too drunk.

He needed to figure out who the fuck she was. Ikora had used her name, so he had that, but without having any point of reference to ask Ikora about a specific Warlock, it would be suspicious. And not nearly as fun as hunting her down and surprising her. She had won the first round. He rather planned on winning the second.

Cayde-6 took another long moment to stare up at the sky, looking up at the great underbelly of the Traveler.

All in all, a _great_ evening.


	2. Void-Burn

Cayde was…not obsessed.

He definitely was not obsessed. He was not obsessed, he was just very particularly focused on trying to find one particular Guardian out of thousands. It did not help that he was pretty certain that if Ikora had gone to Squall specifically for translation and assistance, that Squall was probably not the actual name she used in her usual day to day work.

Warlocks liked having too many names to count.

Ikora was the Vanguard of the Warlocks, and Cayde knew that “Ikora” was one of many names she worked under, especially when she was doing some more of the subtle actions of the Warlock. The other names she had, even he was not entirely certain of. Perhaps Zavala knew of them. Cayde shook his head. He was trying to focus.

Really, truly, he needed to focus.

Not that it was hard to think back to Squall. Fuck, was she ever one of the few things he could really get himself to focus on. That night in the club haunted him. The mystery of it, being _played_ like that and not being given the chance to return the salvo, it all just _burned_ him. He ached to know who the hell Squall was so he could pay her back for that night.

Not the glimmer payback…no she had said drinks were on her and he was not too terribly keen on settling that tab, but she had outmaneuvered him from the very beginning. Sure, she was a Warlock and that was part and parcel to who they were, but it still annoyed him that some Warlock that he had never actually met (probably) had gotten him as good as she had. And turnabout was fair play.

Besides, if he could sneak up on her, that would be just a delicious turn.

He really tried not to think about it too much. Because he had spent a lot of time in his apartment thinking about it. On his own. His fingers skating his body, the flickering of the void echoing behind his solar, pressing ice cubes against overheating plates, trying to mimic the touch of her void Light against his body. He thought about what it would be to find her, hunt her down in the Tower, sneak up behind her, wrap his arms around her middle and greet her with a purred rumble of his processors. He’d show her who the true master of these matters was.

Cayde had spent…a lot of time thinking about it.

A lot of _very_ private time, in all honesty.

He masturbated to her a lot, is what his brain was getting around to reminding him.

That night he had spent in the club with her, and then fucking her through the wall, and then her coming back specifically to take control for as long as it took for her to cum on top of him, and then those breathless long moments when she collapsed against his chestplates, keeping the heat within him from venting out, building up pressure, delicious pressure within him. There was so much in that that Cayde wanted _again_ but first he had to find her.

He would think up a few dozen more things that he was going to do once he found her throughout his day and then really think about what those _things_ would mean when he was back alone in his apartment. Or, if he was feeling cheeky, he’d let a subprocess handle the whole thought line of just what it was that he wanted to fixate on while he went about the rest of his job. He could not really ask his Hunters to go find the information he wanted, not without alerting Ikora.

Cayde didn’t know what Squall’s fireteam was made up of – he had heard their names but a search for them had not turned up anything. Fucking _nicknames_. He didn’t want the grapevine to go ahead of him. He didn’t want her to know that he was hunting her down. If he alerted the wrong Hunter, Squall would find out what was happening and anticipate him. He had to do this all on his own, because the Hunters did not have access to Ikora’s Hidden.

Fuck, if he had like ten minutes with the Hidden to ask after Squall, he was certain he would at least have something to fucking go off of. But then he was involving the Hidden and if Ikora was going to her for Eliksni translations, there was a pretty good chance that Squall was at least tangentially related to the work the Hidden would do. He was in a rather hard place (haha, hard like his _cock_ , god **damn** ) with trying to solve this stupid fucking riddle.

Grumbling darkly to himself, Cayde halfheartedly eavesdropped on Ikora as she gave her debrief of the Vanguard’s Warlock-y activities for the past few days. None of it was about Squall and it was distracting him from looking through more of the databases searching for anyone who had used that callsign before. She had to be an older Guardian, no one could do _that_ with their Light right after waking back up, so she clearly had had some time to forge it, but where, and under what name, and with what fireteam because so far all of his searches had come up empty.

“Yes, and the merging of the new Titans and the new Warlocks’ initial Void training by your appointee has been going well. She has been demonstrating an interesting way of handling the intricacies of these new Guardians, and more importantly, they seem to be, after that rather tense first meeting, settling in,” Zavala said in his usual dispassionate tone.

Cayde blinked, tuning back into the conversation.

Hadn’t Squall said something about…that?

There had been some sort of talk about this, he was pretty sure. Something something young Guardians, something or other training them, something Void, something else. There had been a lot of alcohol and she had been riding him at the moment and yes sure that wasn’t a really good thing to think about in that moment but he vaguely remembered something about her being asked to go train some new people and the void and goddamn had she been _riding_ him.

Focus.

Fucking her halfway through the wall had been something else as well. The anonymity of it, the pursuit of nothing but his own pleasure, the way her Ghost had been pushed up against his neck, her tinny voice gasping in his ear, how she had demanded more from him when she thought he was going to leave her unsatisfied and teased (never, he would never) (okay maybe he would but only if he promised to come back later), all of it, and he burned for anything that riled and roused so _much_ in him.

Immortality was a hell of a goddamn drag.

He shook his head, trying to listen to Ikora and Zavala talk about the new Voidlocks and Void…tans? Voidlock rolled off the tongue spectacularly well, and Void…tan did not. Damn.

“Bubbletitan it is…”

“What?” Ikora said, looking up from her conversation with Zavala, her brows coming together.

To anyone else, it would have been completely unnoticeable, that expression. But Cayde had been Ikora’s Hunter for centuries, and he knew _that look_. She was going to get an answer out of him and if he did not respond quickly, it would be an answer to a question she had yet to ask.

“I was thinking about the best way to refer to Void-Light Titans. Voidlocks, well that just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Nightstalker is just a cool name, no need to fix what isn’t broken but…Voidtan? Bubbletitan? Nothing sounds quite right, you know?”

Zavala grunted under his breath, rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to Ikora.

Seemingly satisfied, Ikora returned to the conversation as well.

“As I was saying, Ikora, the combination of the two groups seems to be yielding interesting results. The Guardian you selected has a particular skill for utilization of her Light, and seems to be passing some of that information along. Though I must admit, her first meeting was…rough.”

That was as good an opening as Cayde was going to get, and he knew it.

“What happened?”

Both of them looked to him and, ever careful, Good Hunter, Cayde lifted his face into surprise and shrugged.

“Hey, Voidlock teaching little ‘locks and tighty-whiteys how to Guardian and getting a comment about it being rough sounds interesting. I want to know more about it. Maybe consider throwing a couple Hunters in there if you think about doing something similar with Solar Hunters or Arc Hunters in a few weeks.”

Zavala looked frustrated with the interruption, and looked to his Ghost. Zavala gestured to the Ghost, and, moments later, Cayde’s own Ghost chirped at him, informing him that a new file had been sent over for him, when he had time.

“It’s her,” Cayde’s ghost whispered to him.

He could feel the vents on his chest flicker open, halfway to an embarrassing hissing vent of the sudden pressure, but casually, just _super_ casually, he reached up to scratch at his armor, and surreptitiously press the vent back closed. His friends and Fireteam would absolutely be familiar with the sound of his shocked arousal.

It was _her_. Squall. One more clue, a little closer to her, bringing her within his range, and closer back to his…

Alright, he was a _little_ obsessed with her. Just a little. Feeling his processors whirl up at just the mention of her, and the thought of having her again had his crotch plates shifting open in anticipation. He wanted her more than he thought was entirely appropriate.

Cayde-6 did not have lips to bite, but he really wanted this stupid fucking meeting to be over so that he could go watch the video he’d been given and try and learn more about Squall. With the video, he could ask a few more questions after he watched it a few dozen times under the guise of wanting to know more about the training and the trainer and not necessarily creepy or weird.

The rest of the meeting wrapped up within an hour.

Agonizing hour, to be honest. Went far longer than a single hour should or could but as soon as it was done, Cayde was gone, sweeping away, his cloak flaring out behind him as he hustled back towards his apartment. He needed to watch this video. Needed to see her again, needed to make sure that Squall was the one he was looking for and that that name actually related to that Guardian who had taunted him so effortlessly in the club not so few days before.

He was gone, hustling past his Hunters who probably needed to make a report, sending a message through his Ghost that reports could be turned in to his usual position at the Vanguard table and he would read them when he returned in a few hours and for business to proceed as normal. Most importantly, people were not to try and contact him. He was busy.

Research.

Research was that sort of thing that Ikora would never question him on as long as he had some sort of intelligent questions to ask about Squall and the training exercises when he was done with the first couple watches of this video.

Fuck, his plates were aching with the pressure of keeping them closed and making things appear normal for as long as his walk back to his apartment took.

As Hunter Vanguard, he had the luxury of a larger than average apartment, relatively secluded from other Guardians, with delightfully thick walls and no direct neighbors, above or below him. A hard find in the Last City, as crowded as it was, but the cushy desk job that rankled him more than he would ever say did have some nice perks, and this apartment was definitely one of them.

So if he needed to excuse himself for a mid-afternoon wank over a training video with a Guardian he had fucked through a wall, he very well could without anyone hearing him or wanting to comment on why he was already hastily pulling his shirt open, vents hissing as the anticipation seared him.

“Put the fucking video up, c’mon, c’mon, I want to see –“

“Be patient, Cayde,” his Ghost chided him as Cayde rushed to his room, stripping out of half of his clothes in a cascade of Light.

He threw himself dramatically on the bed, his pants unbuckled, ready for a hand or two to slide down under what little clothing remained on him if the need took him. His Ghost rolled its lone eye and with a single chirp, uploaded the video clip to Cayde’s personal screen-feed. There was a moment as the data was compiled and readied, and then, with a gentle pop, the screen materialized in front of him.

The room being taped was one of the larger ones in the Tower, a lower room, taking up a majority of the floor, which was good when you were trying to train new Guardians.

They tended to get a little…explode-y sometimes.

Squall was sitting there, lounging in the only chair in the room, unarmored, wearing something that looked shockingly similar to what she had been wearing in the club that…really good night. Muted colors, keeping to what looked to be darker blues with the occasional brassy gold flash, but despite looking simple, they were well designed. Glimmer went into those clothes. Quite a lot of glimmer.

How the _fuck_ had he missed that?

In front of her, arranged in a loose half circle that was roughly divided down the middle between Warlocks and Titans, were the new Guardians. They stood uneasily by contrast to her, some holding weapons, most in their armor already. They all looked to Squall, nervous, uncertain of what to expect. Some whispered amongst themselves. Squall did not move, just looked to those speaking with an unreadable gaze.

A frisson of heat chased down Cayde’s spine. Warlocks of long enough age had a certain _air_ to them. No one spoke when a Warlock did not want them to. By the Light, it was _hot_.

Silence fell over the group after a short moment, and Squall allowed that moment to stretch for a long while. Cayde found himself getting more and more uncomfortably aroused by the second. What he would do to have her attention like that, to be sitting in front of her and squirming. He’d make a game of it, of course, he was, after all, a Hunter, but goddamn.

“I was resurrected one hundred and seventy four years ago. I came to in an underground bunker out in the middle of the EDZ. I woke up alone, and Lask, my Ghost was in front of me. Their first words to me were “Eyes up, Guardian, we have Fallen incoming.” I didn’t know what the Fallen were, I died in the Golden Age, long before the Fallen came to us. I say alone, but only halfway mean it.”

Squall took a deep breath, finally turning away from the group and looking down into her hands, where Lask settled, blinking up at their Guardian.

“I was surrounded by bodies. My rebirth in the Light of the Traveler stripped my knowledge of those people from me. I do not know who they were anymore, but sometimes I wake up from nightmares I forget immediately, with names of people I don’t remember spilling out of my lips. Sometimes when Eliksni are firing at me, I hear someone else’s voice coming out of the back of my mind, urging me to run, to get to the bunker.”

Squall shook her head. She brought her hands up, cradling Lask in them, before pressing a kiss to her Ghost.

“I suppose this is a long way of telling you that the Ghost with you may not be the only ghost that haunts you. There is nothing wrong with you. I know the Vanguard will never talk to you about it – Zavala insists that Guardians do not go back and try and find out who they _were_ , and instead be content with who they _are_. No offense to the Titans here, but that is the worst advice you will be given in your tenure as a Guardian.”

She stood now, her movements careful and precise. Lask rose into the air next to her, the blue and gold fins rotating slowly around its eye.

“He is trying to protect you from the realization that you may not be able to get the answers you want. That if you go looking, the most you’ll find is a necklace with your name on it wrapped around a matching necklace with a name you don’t recognize. That you _were_ someone and now you cannot remember who it was. He wants to keep you from the pain of knowing that now, nothing you did matters anymore. Nothing you were matters. You are Guardians now. That is your purpose.”

Squall took a deep breath, looking across the gathered young Guardians. Some of their bodies, their physicalities were older than hers. The Traveler did not discriminate by age when it chose new Guardians from the bodies of the thousands of dead. The appearance of age did not matter. She looked young, but she was plenty old enough.

“You…all of you, now, are Guardians. And your job is to protect those who are not as strong as you. You must forge your Light. You must forge it time and time again. You will fight. You will fall. You will die. Your Ghost will pick you up. And you will go _back_ to the fight. Time. And time. And time again. Until you are sick to death of dying. And you will die again anyway. Today is the beginning of that forging process that will continue for the rest of your lives. You, all of you, are here now because the Traveler saw something in you that was worthy of this gift. Do not squander it. Embrace it.”

She lifted a hand, and Void-Light coalesced through the air around her body. Flickers of purple energy, held in the air around her, sparking power that reflected in her eyes. The Void was held in stasis around her body, a casual display of power for those who had only just found how to even start to reach for the new power that burned in them.

“You are Guardians. Eyes up.”

Squall stood straight and met the gaze of each of the young Guardians in turn.

“Now. Let’s practice.”

The Guardians in front of her snapped to attention. Shoulders straightened and Cayde saw tears in the eyes of some. He had to admit, that was one of the most inspirational things he had heard in a while. Zavala could take some notes from Squall. She had accurately portrayed the less glamorous side of being a Guardian but…

He still felt his mechanical heart pounding against his steel ribs. No blood to pump, but the same staccato thump echoed through him.

The Warlocks already had a Vanguard, but Squall was something else. That chance encounter, even if she had been manipulating it all or at least some of it, from the very beginning had touched something in Cayde. Fuck.

His hands slid down his chest, slipping beneath the hem of his pants, his fingers toying with the plates that protected his cock. The video went on, and as much as he wanted to just watch Squall, the training was fascinating. Blending Warlock and Titan sensibilities was a difficult task, but it seemed like Squall had enough of a handle on it.

She moved with confidence, a lazy sort of power flowed through her, and it seemed the Warlocks in attendance reacted well to that, easily sliding into step behind her when she demonstrated her grasp of the Light. Most of the Titans did as well, adapting her movements to their own Light. Honestly, it was rather entrancing to behold. He understood why Ikora had asked Squall, specifically to train these newcomers.

Perhaps there were other Guardians who were capable of the same thing, but watching Squall quietly and confidently put these new Guardians through their paces made him ache for a Hunter like her. No live ammo, nothing more strenuous than pulling the Light up to their hands and dismissing it, getting used to the ebb and flow of the Light through them.  It was not easy when you first came to your Light, and having someone train you – someone have the time to train you, well that was often hard to find

The Void was particularly hard to feel, especially for Titans. Warlocks took to it quite naturally, as it was generally the first thing that “broke” through them as they awoke. Titans were a little harder to acclimatize to the Void, but they managed under her tutelage, brute-forcing their way into an understanding of what came so much more naturally and delicately to Warlocks.

Squall moved with a certainty that older Warlocks got after enough battles. It was like she expected the world to move out of her way, and to the surprise of none, it did just that. The Void-Light she summoned as a demonstration warped around her body, wrapping itself through the air around her like an overly-attached lover. Flickers of purple shone around her as she demonstrated what it was to pull a grenade of Light out of nothing, moving deliciously slow through the Light as she did so.

He watched, entranced, his arousal half-forgotten as her fingers reached into the Void-Light and carefully plucked strings of causality until she got the result she wanted. She pulled a grenade, half formed, still coalescing into being out of the Light, to show the young Warlocks what it was that they were looking to build out of nothing.

Learning how to pull the grenade out of thin air while you were in the middle of combat, without thinking about it, without needed to hesitate – that was one of the most profound aspects of manipulating the Light.

It became second nature after a while, happened quickly, as fast as the Light could fill the hole left in the grenade’s absence.

But to see someone pull a half-formed grenade out of the air and hold it, so casually, so nonchalant, in the palm of their hand, and allow other Guardians to look at it, and in one heart-wrenching display of casuality, hold the half-formed grenade of Squall’s Light.

He did not even know it was possible to _do_ that, but he watched as tendrils of Void-Light wrapped around Squall’s hand and pushed the grenade towards the younger Warlock.

Forget…okay well maybe don’t _forget_ how hot she was, but definitely disregard that for a moment at least – Squall was a Warlock without peer outside of the upper echelons of the Vanguard. Maybe even some of those Warlocks whose names were only spoken in hushed whispers amongst those who _Knew_ too much would know of just how terrifying what Squall was doing could be.

How had he missed her? A Guardian like this did not come along often, and when they did, they usually had the sort of bombast that Ikora, or he, or Shaxx, or Zavala, even, had. He had not even heard of a Guardian _named_ Squall until a handful of days ago, but she was skilled enough in what she did to allow another Guardian to hold the half-formed grenade and lecture at length about what the grenade was, how to form it, and what to do when you needed one faster than you could pull one from the Light.

Had Cayde been a note-taking man, he might have even bothered writing down some of what she said for training some of his Hunters down the line.

As it was, however, he was not the sort to take notes and he was still endlessly entranced. Sure, he had hoped that this had been a little less learn-y and a little more sexy, but there was still something that was definitely attractive about watching someone so very confident in their own abilities teach others that same amount of confidence.

She was still not wearing any armor, and that nagged at something in Cayde, even as he watched her in just a little bit of awe. How was he supposed to find her if all he had was her name and her out and about clothes? Sure, he could comb through the City’s databases and try and find her on camera somewhere but that was time intensive and would draw attention to what he was doing.

He wanted to know what her armor looked like so he could watch her in the field. He wanted to see everything he could of her, whenever he could, because…he was maybe a little obsessed.

The training went well for a majority of the video, and he could not see what it was that Zavala had been referring to as “rough”. Perhaps he had just taken umbrage with her opening speech, which Cayde could really see being something Zavala would not like. Zavala was more “rah rah we need to do this rah chosen ones rah rah best and strongest” sort of speech-giver, and Squall had spent a good portion of that talk being frank about how much it sucked.

It was not until it was coming close to the end of the video (Cayde checked) that he started to see just what it was that Zavala could have been referring to. A human Titan had split off from the main group, skulking in the background, watching Squall with a narrowed glare. His Ghost was clearly saying something to him, but the video was not focused on him, it was focused on recording Squall’s training for posterity.

Cayde wanted to watch Squall, but that Titan was concerning him. Armor flickered on, and off of the Titan. The armor of someone who was still young. Nothing great, hardly anything better than the kit that the Ghosts were sent out with when they were going to go bring a new Guardian to the Light. He would put it on, and his Ghost would dismiss it. The argument was a quiet one, and no one else seemed to notice the growing tension in the background.

They were not Hunters. They were not meant to notice these things. Cayde was the Vanguard, he noticed it and ached for someone, anyone to notice and intervene before things got any worse.

No one did.

Squall was engrossed with showing Titans how to pull their Light around them, starting the sparkings of the barriers that they would soon be able to pull up to defend their fireteam, to support them, to bolster them in a firefight. She seemed glorious and effervescently engaged with them, looking between them with a small smile.

The Titan in the background was pacing now, agitated, angry. About what, Cayde could not begin to fathom. Squall had not done anything to even come close to being aggressive or insulting to anyone. Other than that opening speech, there was really nothing in there that anyone could feasibly be upset about, because the rest of her time had been spent teaching both Warlock and Titan what it was to be one with the Void.

He found himself absently reaching for his own weapon, fingers instinctively seeking out the familiar and safe weight of his handcannon against his palm. His Ghost did not materialize the weapon for him, and Cayde was left grasping vacantly for a weapon that he just did not have.

Squall was talking to the Titans, directing them, making a halfway joke about how Zavala would disagree with what she was saying, and that while it was well and good what Zavala wanted to make them Guardians, and have them do as he said until the time they were all more prepared for what could come next. Sometimes a Guardian would never be prepared, and perhaps he had a point in telling them to just listen to what he said without thinking to hard in it.

Cayde agreed with Squall, but that hardly seemed surprising. She had a point. Zavala was too cautious. Titans were cautious until they weren’t. That was the beauty of Titans, but it came across as overbearing when it was Zavala. New Guardians were delicate things, and their first few months of re-life, a lot could go wrong.

The Titan in the back of the room growled, and stepped forward.

“You _can’t_ keep saying that about Vanguard Zavala! He is the leader of the Titans and he demands and deserves your respect!”

Squall blinked and turned towards the Titan, her hands coming up placatingly, a smile wrapping itself across her face.

“I do not mean to insult Zavala, I just disagree with him and his ways of approaching this knowledge. I’m a Warlock, this is what we do. There is not something I say to upset, only to joke and indicate that the be-all, end-all of your learning should never rest solely on your Vanguard’s word. There is more to being a Guardian than the Vanguard. There are legions of Guardians who only interact with the Vanguard except at the barest moments. No one is above reproach.”

 That didn’t soothe the younger Titan. His armor flashed back on and he clutched a gun. The other Guardians drew back quickly, and Squall took a step forward, putting herself in between the aggressive young Titan and the rest of the Guardians.

“He is _my_ Vanguard and I’m not going to let you slander him or what he does or how he chooses to do it! You don’t know what he has gone through, don’t know anything about what he can do and being this disrespectful is abhorrent!”

Squall did not pull her weapons, nor summon her armor. She studied the Titan carefully, her mouth turning down at the corners. Her shoulders squared to the younger Guardian, and her Ghost hovered behind her left shoulder, shell spinning back and forth wildly as it looked between Squall and the young Titan.

“He is not my Vanguard. And not only is he not my Vanguard, _I_ am in charge of you in this moment. If you are going to defend Zavala’s honor because he is your trainer, do I not deserve the same respect? Whether or not you disagree with me about what Zavala is saying, I am –“

The young Titan screamed, pulled his gun up, aimed down the sights at Squall and she still did not pull armor, or a gun, simply stopped talking and tensed.

She stared at the Titan, her brows furrowing together. Void-Light gathered around her hands and chest, banding out of nothingness into a physical manifestation of her emotions. To any Guardian who had spent any amount of time around a Warlock, that mantle of power was a pretty obvious indicator that a Warlock was upset and needed some space. Or for someone to stop fucking talking and listen to them.

Cayde had seen Ikora do that plenty of times and he knew better than to challenge her when it got to that point. Warlocks were _terrifying_ and Squall had been consistently demonstrating a mastery of her Light that should have had any other Guardian fleeing.

But these Guardians were young, and this Titan was hotheaded.

“Put the gun down, Guardian,” Squall said flatly. “You won’t like the outcome.”

A chill raced down Cayde’s spine, followed immediately after by a searing heat blooming in his chest.

God that _tone_.

The Titan did not lower his gun, but he did not fire yet. That was a mistake. Squall charged, springing into a standing Blink. Void-Light sparkled through the air and Cayde’s crotch plates sprang open and his cock throbbed.

Fuck.

Instinctively, the Titan pulled his Ward of Dawn down, a sizeable shield for the Guardian’s age. The Ward was nothing special, the Guardian was too young to have learned something more.

Squall did not reappear, the sparking purple glow of the Void working through the air. The young Titan looked relieved from behind his Ward. The Light glowed and Cayde couldn’t tell where the fuck Squall was but it didn’t matter because when she showed back up, it was –

Look, each and every Guardian had their own flare when it came to their class ability. Zavala’s Ward of Dawn could hold and support the entire fucking Vanguard headquarters in the Hall of Guardians against a minor threat, or a smaller area against everything excepting a full blown orbital strike. Ikora’s Nova Bomb could tear through just about anything, but he had watched Crucible last week and there had been a younger Voidlock had split their Nova Bomb into five separate, seeking orbs of power to wipe an entire Fireteam and take a control point in overtime.

Guardians forged their Light. That was what they _did_.

So when Squall stepped through the Ward of Dawn, one of her forearms held over her head, a Nova Bomb flattened over her head to make some small mockery of the Ward of Dawn this Titan had pulled, every processor in Cayde’s chest screeched to a halt. Squall pressed her knuckles against his Ward, and her Nova Bomb shield sliced through the Ward with an ease that had Cayde’s hands scrambling against his pant’s-hem, tearing the clothes away and fisting his cock.

She peered up at the Titan, unarmored still, holding her Nova Bomb in stasis over her head. Her other hand came up, and Cayde watched, a breathless, horrifyingly aroused moan ripping out of his voice-box as she pulled another flattened Nova Bomb into the space over her other forearm. Slow, deliberate, intense, she held her power in, letting only what she deigned appropriate leak through.

This was why she had been asked to lead Warlocks and Titans, because her own Variant Nova Bomb was like _this_ and holy _fuck_ that was hot.

“Run, kid,” she snarled.

Cayde made an answering high, pained whimper. Squall was just going to hit every single one of his buttons all at once and he felt all of the wiring and synth-flesh clench in his gut. The Titan balked, pulling away from Squall, bringing his gun up, but it was too little too late.

The Nova Bomb that had warped around her forearm shot forward. The Titan did not stand a chance, even as he held his finger down on his autorifle, bullets tearing through the air. Squall’s Nova Bomb ate through the Titan’s body, dissolving him into a shower of purple, and then exploded outwards against the Titan’s Ward of Dawn. The only thing that kept the rest of the Guardians in the room safe from the explosion was the tail end of that Ward.

The Ward of Dawn faded, and the cloud of the Void-Light slowly dissipated. Out of the fog of the Titan’s disintegrated body, a form rose. The Light warped through the purple haze and Squall stood.

It had been years since Cayde had cum in his pants. He was not a hair trigger man, but –

Squall rose, her head slowly looking up. Her helmet – he had never seen a helmet like that before. It had a crest of metal feathers tracing either side of her brow, a crown of steel. Her robes were the finest he had seen in a long while, fit tight to her body, in shimmering gold and red, the collar high on her neck, brushing the underside of her chin. The gun resting in her hands was an auto rifle as well, though he could see a shotgun and a hand cannon in their appropriate places on her back as well. Her boots glowed with ley-lines of power. She shrugged out of the motes of Void-Light that had, up until recently formed a young Titan’s body.

His head snapped back and a scream of pleasure ripped out of his chest, all of his vents opening down his chest. He hadn’t even been jerking himself off with any sort of focus but that image, that unholy spike of fear that drove into his heart and was immediately met with an answering surge of adrenaline and desire, he could not help it, could not begin to dream to think to find a way to help the fact that he _wanted_ that.

With a hissed curse, he hastily rewound the video to cover what he had missed in the afterglow, and even blinking static out of his eyes, he had to work towards actually paying attention to what was happening. Because goddamn. Goddamn, goddamn, god _fucking_ damn.

The Ghost of the Titan hovered up, hesitantly, in front of Squall. She reached a gloved hand out, and Cayde caught sight of ahamkhara bones across the back of her knuckles and shivered. He groaned, wishing that he was just the slightest bit less sensitive so he could start his enjoyment of this anew. She was – Squall was – she had been so fucking right to not show him this armor because this was _exotic._ And not in the way that was like, a bellydancing Awoken out in the Reef coming up out of a comically large cake, but in the “this is unique armor in unique colors, and even the pieces that are not wholly and solely her own, god fucking damn, is she resplendent.”

He knew what she looked like, in and out of her armor.

Sure, she could have other, better armor, or could wear something different in Crucible, but _this_ was her preferred armor when things got heavy and yep. Yep very good. Excellent even.

Her fingers cradled the Titan’s ghost, and he watched as there was a surge of Light. The resurrection took almost no time – couldn’t be the ahamkara bones doing that, had to be something else that fed that ability - and the Titan appeared in front of Squall. Before he could even say anything, the autorifle in Squall’s hands vanished into motes of light to be replaced with her shotgun. Savagely, she shoved the barrel of the gun up under the sternum-V of the Titan’s armor and unloaded.

The Titan exploded into fractals of Arc-Light as the Arc energy surged through the Titan’s body.

Again, Squall reached out, resurrecting the Titan faster than any other Guardian could, bringing them back up. This time, as soon as the Titan resurrected, he tried to throw a wild haymaker towards her head, Void-Light sparking around his fist.

Squall dodged it easily, and both of her hands came up. There was a snap and a deep, sonorous hum as her melee strike caught the Titan in the gut. Shocked, the Titan gasped as the Void ate through his chest and armor. He had time enough for a single, solitary, keening whimper before he died again. The Ghost appeared, chirping and spinning madly.

“You can stop! He understands!” it screamed at her, frantically trying to defend its Guardian’s Light from Squall’s touch.

Squall seemed to only hesitate for a moment.

“Well he can tell me that himself then. Eyes _up_ , Guardian.”

Her fingers reached for the Ghost’s Light, and pulled the Guardian back into being again. This time, the Titan did not fight back, coming back up and standing there.

“Armor. _Off_.”

The Titan dropped his armor immediately, and stood to interpose himself between Squall and his Ghost when she brought her gun back up and aimed down her sights at the Ghost. She did not dismiss her armor or her weapon, just stood, firm and resolute, staring at the young Titan until he averted his eyes.

“You should think twice before drawing weapon on a Guardian older than you. Every Guardian is needed, every Ghost is important, but so _fucking_ help me, Guardian, if you act like that towards me or any other Warlock ever again, they will make you feel like this was **easy**. I disagree with Zavala. He is not my Vanguard, and even my Vanguard understands that I have every right to question her. I am a Guardian. I am my Own. These things are the truth of the world. You will remember this. You will learn from this.”

The Titan did not say anything, just stood in between Squall and his Ghost, looking at Squall’s gloves, not lifting his eyes to meet hers.

“I don’t care if you don’t fucking like me, Guardian. You aren’t on my Fireteam, you aren’t a Warlock, and you are a _child_. I don’t care if I look young, I don’t fucking care if you think I’m disrespectful to your Vanguard. Draw weapon, get shot. Your posturing has no goddamn effect on me. We’re immortal, dipshit. You kill me? I get the fuck back up. I killed you? I got you the fuck back up. Don’t get this twisted in your head. You’re immortal, which means that if I want to spend my fucking day sitting on top of the highest tower in the Last City and sniping your _fucking_ brains out every time you so much as think about going outside, I fucking can. Because. You. Will. Get. Back. Up.”

There was stunned silence as the gathered young Guardians stared at Squall.

She let the silence reign for a long moment before straightening up to her full height, out of her offensive crouch, and dismissed both her armor and weaponry.  The contrast was painful. Palpable. She appeared lesser, smaller, nonthreatening in a weird, off=putting way now that they had seen just what sort of brutality she was capable of.

“Any questions?”

There were mumbled “no”s and a few silent head-shakes. No one knew what to make of what they had just seen. Up until this moment, even those of them who had gone through the significant discomfort of dying and coming back, had not seen just how brutal it could be. Squall had terrified them. She had gone from teacher to War Machine at the drop of a pin and even after the armor was gone and the weaponry was vanished, there was still a new pang of fear that had wormed into them all.

If this was what _Squall_ could do, and she was not a Vanguard, what the fuck were Zavala, Cayde-6, and Ikora capable of?

Squall took a deep breath and reached up to brush her hair out of her eyes.

“Fine then, dismissed. Run some light patrols out in the Cosmodrome if you have your fireteam up. If you’re feeling like getting comfortable with what it feels like to die over and over and over again, feel free to jump into the Crucible, tell Lord Shaxx I said hi and remind him that Keldrin owes me glim.”

Squall waved a hand, and the young Guardians did not hesitate to quickly vacate the room. The Titan was the last to move, his eyes now firmly centered on Squall’s boots. She waited, patiently, for him to either move or find something to say.

The silence stretched on.

The video cut out.

Cayde’s vents hissed one last time as he relaxed, his spine going limp as his sweet, sweet release finally settled over him. That had been _intense_. So intense. So good. That moment, when she had looked up out of the dust and Void-Light?

He went and rewound the video to that moment, and spent a good long thirty minutes watching that scene over and over again. His eyes rolled and his body arched as his hands worked filth and sin across his body. This was the greatest gift anyone had ever given him in long memory. He could forgive Ikora for not giving him a Dawning gift because now he had this and he would have it _forever_ and soon enough he’d sneak up on Squall and just –

“There is someone at the door, Cayde,” came his Ghost’s voice, interrupting his seventh or eighth viewing of that scene in the past hour.

He groaned, wiping a hand across his chest and trying to get his processors to come back online enough for him to get to his feet. He wasn’t expecting any visitors but some of his more industrious Hunters would track him down to try and deliver a mission report or something else, or a Warlock who just did not care about his own private time.

But if the person knew he was there, they more than likely knew something important that would require his presence in short enough order. With a grumble, he had his Ghost clean off all of the cum that he had painted himself with and buckled his pants back on. He was not going to bother with his shirt or his cloak. No one should expect him to be clothed if he was in his room, even if he was still technically expected to go back to work later, it was his room and rooms were clothing optional. His pants were a formality.

He dragged his feet towards the door, wincing and rolling his neck as his pleasant haze slowly faded away at the prospect of having to do _work_ instead of better spending his time like watching that video over and over again or watching Crucible or actually doing research to find out where Squall was and what else she had done because that was definitely personal armor and he shouldn’t have any actual problem with finding her now that he had –

The knock at his door was loud and demanding. Cayde grumbled, popped his neck one last time, and pulled the door open. The sight that greeted him made him curse under his breath so quickly and so vociferously,l his voice box shorted out

“Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6, Ikora Rey sent me to talk with you as you expressed….interest in my teaching methods. I am here to...shall I say… _offer_ my services to you.”

Squall was leaning up against his doorframe, smirking at him. Cayde wished “cocky” wasn’t such a good look on Warlocks.

Her hair was mussed, like she had been wearing a helmet up until very recently. The faint smell of kinetic ammo hovered in the air around her, and even though the clothes she was wearing were clean and clearly not meant for battle, she had not had much time between being in the field and showing up at his door. Her robes were barely a few shades of purple darker than what Ikora wore, flecked with brassy threads, and collar clips that drew his eye to the delicate column of her throat.

The vents on Cayde’s body that framed the bottom of where humans had pectoral muscles popped open with a brief hiss, and he didn’t even bother trying to press them closed.

 _Fuck_.

He just stared at her.

“This…is not- _kt_ real,” he said slowly, his voice cutting out halfway.

Squall winked at him, put a hand on his chest and pushed him back into his apartment. She kicked the door shut behind her.

 The slamming sound broke Cayde out of his stupor, and he planted his feet for just long enough to stop her forward movement. She pulled back from him, her brows furrowing ever so slightly in confusion as she waited to hear what it was that Cayde wanted to say in case she needed to make a hasty retreat out of his room.

“You’re a goddamn _menace_ Squall, you’re a fucking menace and I cannot-kt – I can’t – you’re just, this isn’t – this is _not fair_. You know that right-kt, you know that fucking with me like this isn’t-kt fair?” Cayde mumbled, pulling her closer as she pressed herself up his body.

The Void still hummed in her, a chill flushing through his frame at the press of _cold_ before the answering rush of _heat_. He did not even consider hesitating any more than he had already. Time was wasting.  

Cayde rushed her, pinning her back against his door with a loud thump before pressing his mouth to hers hungrily. Void-Light rushed against his plates, sending fractals of hunger and _need_ through his entire body. Squall grabbed the back of his pants and pulled him tight to her, urging him to press her harder to the door, hiking a leg up over his hip and grinding against his cock, which was definitely already out from between his plates and ready to go again.

He kissed her, biting her lips with his mouth-plates as she moaned his name. The desperation that ate at his core was overwhelming. He needed more of her - he needed so much more of her.

Her leg slid off of his hips, and when Cayde made an upset sound under his breath, Squall laughed. She bit his mouth-plate. It didn’t matter that her teeth were blunt and he was made primarily out of metal, the bite still got his attention and he blinked once. Squall kissed him harder, her fingers working at his belt.

 _Fuck_.

“What _were_ you up to?” she purred, feeling out the undone button and zipper with a grin and a brush of her thumb against his exposed plates.

Cayde felt her smile and he was ever so happy that he had no real sense of embarrassment because he was pretty certain that other people may have been embarrassed. Then again, Squall was kneeling down in front of him, only a little awkwardly because of the whole “pinned-to-the-wall” thing, pulling his pants open so the cold that rolled off of her in sheets could combat the heat that sloughed off of him.

“Jacking off to that video of you beating that Titan’s ass,” he grunted as Squall slowly, slowly opened her mouth and licked the head of his cock. “You’re, s-kt-eriously gunna kt-ill me. I – you – fuc-kt - _please!_ ”

The orange lights that ran down the length of his cock cast all sorts of interesting shadows across Squall’s face. Cayde braced an arm against the door and thought a little too hard about the last time he had done anything like this same thing with her. A groan ripped out of his mouth, and Squall chuckled. One of her hands slid up his body, and he could feel the _cold_ chasing her every move up his chest. She grabbed onto his free hand and pulled it up to her head, pressing his palm down against her hair and smiling up at him with his cock in her mouth.

Cayde swore something artful and crass in Eliksni and Squall pulled her mouth away from his cock for just the barest moment to growl out the answering comment, in Eliksni as well. She spoke it without a real accent. Cayde laughed, and then Squall’s mouth was back on his cock, her lips and tongue polishing the metal and fiber-weave length of it. The running lights glowed through her skin, and as her head bobbed up and down his length, the lightshow was just…

Really fucking good.

He did his best not to thrust overhard into her mouth, even as he tightened his grip in her hair. Squall moaned deliciously at the action, her eyes rolling artfully. Her hands came up to grab onto his belt, partly to keep the buckle from hitting the side of her head over and over again and partly to use it as a way to pull Cayde closer to her, looking up to him and winking as she pulled him deeper into her mouth.

The ragged moan that spilled from Cayde’s chest was nearly, blessedly almost covered by the vents down his chest opening up and venting pressure again. But not entirely. She hummed a laugh at him and he really wanted to be angry at the laugh but he could feel the reverberations echoing through his body.

Squall worked her lips and tongue over his cock, keeping a smooth and even pace up the entire length of his cock. She did not seem bothered at all by the half-there thrusts he made or the desperate keening he made when she pressed her tongue into the sensitive divots that lined his cock. Her lips ever-so-gently-kissed the plates at the base of his cock at intermittent intervals, as her throat pressed down on the head of his cock. Just as Cayde thought he maybe could not take too much more of this, Squall pulled him flush to her face, her lips sealing around the base of his cock as she swallowed the head of it down.

A screeching moan ripped out of his mouth that sounded more like metal grating against itself, and really, he should maybe get his vocal box looked at sometime soon.

With every pull of her throat against his cock, he _felt_ the Void-Light tugging on his Solar, dragging heat off and out of him through his cock and he had to blink motes of Light out of his eyes. Why would a Guardian fuck anyone other than another Guardian, especially when there was someone who was as good with their Light as Squall was? What on earth could be better than something like this?

“Oh fuck, oh _fuck_ , _oh fuck_ ,” Cayde grunted, thrusting harder and harsher into Squall’s mouth, forgetting his manners ( _yes_ he had manners, thank you) and chasing the high that he was being promised by her tongue and the Void and the wild rising cacophony in the back of his head.

He didn’t want this to stop. He never ever wanted this to stop. He wanted to fuck her mouth for goddamn ever but the likelihood of that lasting for as long as he’d want to was…maybe a bit better since he had spent the better part of his last few hours fucking his own hand to the memory of her. He was not desensitized, because even spending a solid couple _hours_ masturbating to the sight of her utterly dominating a Titan who had disrespected her had not really exhausted every last iota of pleasure from him.

Still.

Squall was _really_ good with her mouth.

Really exceptionally great.

 _FUCK_.

He crumpled against the door, barely managing to hold himself up. Cayde did not want to collapse against Squall – he was made of metal and pretty significantly heavy, all things held the same, and he did not want to crush her – but there was only so much a man could take when there was a gorgeous, destructive, radiant woman on their knees in front of him.

His off-hand was still in her hair, tightening by inconsequential amounts every time she pulled his thrusts deeper into her mouth. Both of her hands were wrapped up in his belt, or at least they had been the last time Cayde had bothered looking down, but he couldn’t do that too often because if he did it would all be over and he would well and truly lose his fucking mind.

One of his knees gave out and he had to take his hand off Squall’s head to brace against the door. That made a horrifyingly loud banging sound, and Squall pulled her mouth off of his cock with a loud, wet _pop_ that made his toes curl in his boots because yes he was actually still wearing his boots, what the _fuck_ past Cayde why hadn’t you taken your boots off?

“Right, fine then, too much noise,” Squall said, her voice a little rough from Cayde’s cock down her throat. “Let’s go.”

By the Traveler, he nearly fucking came right then. Right across her face and her beautiful, full eyebrows with that devilish little line carved out of the topmost curve of them. 

She wiped her hand across the back of her mouth, and leaned back in again. Cayde’s heart jumped straight up into his throat as her arms wrapped around the back of his thighs, her hands coming up to support his low back.

For a moment, a beautiful, breathless moment, he considered the only reason someone would put their arms like that, and then Squall was laughing and pressing a kiss to his hip bone. She checked behind him looking into his apartment (he should’ve cleaned up – not that he ever actually would, but at least he thought it and the thought that counted) and then in a single, smooth movement, Squall lifted him.

He was not a light Exo.

 ** _FUCK_**.

It looked and felt effortless, and Cayde folded himself over Squall’s head and shoulders, clutching at the back of her head to keep his balance, even as her hands pushed his hips forward, against her face. Her mouth bit at the edge of his hip, and he really did his best to not feel so much like he was going to say something really fucking stupid.

Squall fixed that by dumping him onto his couch, and before he could complain she was following him down, pushing his pants down his hips and halfway down his thighs. Cayde struggled to get himself halfway seated on the couch, his back resting against the arm of the couch as his legs stretched out practically all the way to the other end of it. Squall smirked at him, he made a move to get up off the couch, and one of her knees came down on the seat of his pants, pinning his legs down to the couch, snarled in fabric.

“Come _on_ that’s not-kt-“ Cayde started, reaching for his pants, trying to focus his words and eyes.

She hushed him, and then slowly bent down to take his cock back into her mouth. Squall was curled in on herself to make the movement possible, nearly folded in half to fit onto the couch and still have her mouth in the right position. Cayde didn’t care how it looked, he just cared that he couldn’t move his fucking legs and Squall was intent on making him lose his fucking mind. Goddamn Warlocks.

His hands would go towards his pant’s-hem trying to get them off and out of his way so he could move and open his legs wider for her, and then she would hum and Void-Light would arc across his hips and he’d completely forget what he was trying to do. That was how his fingers ended up tangled in her short hair, as he slowly worked his hips up and down. He balanced his shoulders on the arm of his couch and just enjoyed the sensation of it all.

As Squall went on in this unforgivable torture, Cayde stopped trying to make sense when words and moans spilled out of his mouth. Yes, there was static, yes, sometimes his voice cut out at inopportune times, and yeah, fine, fuck it, all the vents on his chest were hissing to relieve the ungodly pressure in his chest.

Flickers of Solar Light traced down his chest, and ever so delicately, even through the haze of pleasure, he let motes of fire dance through her hair. Between that glow of fire and the light that ran down his cock, there was a decadent lightshow illuminating his apartment.

Not that he could see it, because his eyes were firmly closed as he did his level best to focus on not cumming down her throat before it was well and truly time for that. This felt –

He tried to pull his leg up instinctively, but the restraining pressure of her knee on the snarling presence of his pants and his fucking boots kept him still. Squall hummed a laugh at him, her eyes crinkling at the corner with her smile.

“You are a fuc-kt-ing _mean_ person,” Cayde groused, taking one hand away from Squall’s hair to cover his mouth and bite at the back of his own knuckles.

She pulled her mouth off his cock with a deliciously over-emphasized _POP_ , smacking her lips and letting her tongue loll out of her mouth. Cayde sat up, reaching out for her, and she went easily into his arms. He whined when she lay herself out atop his chest, forcing all his vents closed and making that damnable, maddening pressure build back up again. She knew exactly what she was doing and he didn’t want to ask how many Exos she’d fucked in the past, but it had to be more than just him because it took some learning to know just how to make them lose their minds.

“C’mon-kt. Don’kt do this to me…” he moaned against her mouth as her slow tease continued and the pressure built.

There was a flash of white Light and then he felt the slick press of her cunt against the head of his cock. He grabbed onto her shoulder with one hand and her hip with the other, and Solar-Light burst across her back, setting her clothes alight. She laughed, and there was an answering rush of Void-Light that extinguished the fire, but did nothing to cool him off.

Cayde was burning up inside, and the pressure had nowhere to go and now she was definitely making fun of him and he wasn’t enjoying that. He was very much enjoying that but he was not going to _say_ that, not ever, not unless she asked him to, in which case, he absolutely would tell her everything and anything she asked to know.

He pushed on the back of her hips, trying to get her to get on his dick because he was hard and ready and teased to all goddamn hell from her mouth and watching her from that video earlier, but she resisted easily, keeping her chest pressed to his so the pressure wouldn’t vent and he was stuck practically begging her to just get _on_ with it!

But she didn’t.

Maybe it was because he was not using the proper words and was instead whining and begging under his breath in the native binary of Exos and even if she could translate it, there was no way she was going to be able to keep up with how much he was saying, because goddamn was he saying a lot.

She lay, lazily, on his chest, one leg off his couch, her knee resting on the floor while the other was wedged between his leg and the back of the couch, her slit dripping onto his plates, slowly taunting him with the nearness of the next place he wanted to be.

“Don’t do _what~_ ” she purred at him, wiggling her hips back and forth atop him.

She licked her lips and rolled her body against his. Cayde gave an ineffective jerk of his hips, and for a moment, a brief moment he was rewarded with the feeling of his cock-head brushing up against her slick, inviting warmth. Tendrils of Void-Light wrapped around his cock in the moment of contact, chilling the heat that burned too much in him, pulling him in before he was denied her.

“ _FUC- **KT** I!_” Cayde howled, trying to jerk his hips back up to where he had just been, but she angled her hips up and out of his way.

The smirk on Squall’s face made the pressure in his chest redouble. She was toying with him, playing with him like a cat plays with their meal.

 ** _FUCK_**.

“Well I’m _trying_ to do that, Cayde, but you seem just ever so slow to take me to your bed…so unfortunate…”

“You’re a fuc-kt-ing animal, you’re kt-illing me, you know that-kt? Kt-illing me,” he said, pushing on her hips, trying to slide her down his body so he could finally fuck her proper-like. “I’m the Hunt-kt-er Vanguard and you’re kt-illing me. You’re a bad pers-kt-on and you s-kt-hold feel bad.”

She sighed, and with a great roll of her body and languorous arch of her back, Squall sat up. Cayde blinked, his back tensing as all of his pressure vents hissed open. The sudden relief of his vents and the drop in internal pressure had him melting into the cushions of his couch, which was the exact reason and moment that Squall struck, reaching back and pushing his cock into place so she could sink down onto it.

Cayde grunted, grabbed onto Squall’s hips and went to work immediately. She was sopping slick, dripping all over his hip-plates, and really, honestly, as nice as that was, he was really far more consumed with punishing Squall with blistering pleasure .

 She had been teasing him and while he enjoyed that endlessly, he could not let it go without some sort of small revenge, because otherwise it would be setting a dangerous precedent. More dangerous than fucking her through a wall and then letting her ride him, that’s for sure. He burned star-bright for her, Solar-Light tracing out the lines of his plates, glowing brighter and brighter as he pulled her down in time with his thrusts. He tried to reposition his legs, found his pants still in his way (fuck) and his Ghost finally decided to help him out and abolish the stupid things so he could prop a knee up and really get to work.

Squall gasped, her hands pressing down on his chest, holding the central vent closed as she followed his lead. Shimmering Void-Light coiled around her neck and shoulders. Her head rolled back, her expression of ecstasy illuminated by purple light that came from the place Beyond. Cayde grunted and fucked her harder, wanting nothing more than to turn her into a gibbering mess.

Warlocks said the damndest things if you could get them out of their minds enough. Fuck, there was Hunter half-truth Legend about how the first Nightstalker had come into being because of a Hunter fucking a Voidlock and doing so well at that, that the exhausted Warlock could not help but whisper secrets of the beyond to their lover, and thus, Nightstalkers were born.

Now it wasn’t entirely true, and it also wasn’t not entirely true.

But Hunters – Cayde especially – were made for endurance. Not like Titans, who could go for days (as Cayde knew from experience), no, Hunters were very specifically goal-oriented and could endure a lot to get to that goal.

And after all this fucking teasing and mind-play and just literally everything Squall had done with, and to, him, all Cayde wanted to do was obliterate Squall’s ability to walk straight. It had been wholly unfair of her to do any of this to him, and he was going to really work her over for it.

He had to wait for the right moment to strike, however. Too soon, and Squall would catch onto it. The damnable pressure in his chest, venting as poorly as it did through his lesser vents, made it more than a little difficult to think any sort of plan through with proper coherency. Cayde knew, though, that if he moved too soon, Squall would counter and then he’d end up just where he was now, albeit where he was now was pretty great so it would not be the worst thing to happen to him –

No.

Focus.

He had to focus. Carefully, he guided his hands to the top of her thighs, and definitely had to blink motes of Light out of his eyes as he felt her muscles (who let humans feel so soft and so good???) tensing and relaxing as she rode him. He would thrust up into her, and he’d feel those big muscles tighten up like the steel cables that made up his own thigh muscles, and part of his chest would ache something fierce.

With utmost precision and care, he rolled his hips, canting them forward so his cock would rub up against the front wall of her cunt, dragging across the dense bundle of nerves. Squall shuddered every time he did, her head thrown back and a smile playing across her lips. Soft gasps spilled out of her mouth, breathless little sounds that could barely be heard over the hissing of his own vents.

Slowly, he moved one hand from her hip to the hand she had pressed to his chest, covering her hand with his, a careful first move in the game he was going to try and play.

His plan was a little disrupted when she sent fractals of Void-Light diving down through his chest. The pressure and the burn of the Solar-Light in him fought against the Void’s intrusion. His head snapped back, his mouth dropping open and eyes closing as the sensation overwhelmed him for a moment. Cayde nearly lost the threads of his control right then. Fuck, that felt so _good_.

He had to still himself for a moment to try and regain his control. Squall was not content to allow him the time he needed, planting her other hand on his chest, slightly lower than the first. If Cayde had needed to breathe, he would’ve been uncomfortable with the pressure keeping him from drawing a proper breath in, but he was an Exo and that really wasn’t his concern.

No, his concern was that Squall was riding him too well and he wasn’t going to last if she kept grinding herself down on him with those little mewls of pleasure. He really should’ve asked her if he could’ve recorded this because as it was, he was never going to be able to get the exact sound right in his memory, so he’d have to keep coming back to her until he could reliably remember it.

Fucking fuck fuck, fuck fuck.

No time like the present.

He grabbed her hip with one hand, dropping one of his legs off the couch, and in a single fluid movement, lifted her and dumped her onto the carpeting. She was quick, a leg hiking up over his hips, dragging him down, back into her in a long, sinuous continuation of the same movement.

Cayde, while happy that she had been so quick on the uptake, had rather wanted to surprise her more, so as he withdrew, he looped an arm under her knee and threw her leg up over his shoulder.

A frisson of shock went up her spine, tension chasing the movement as all at once, Cayde was hitting harder and _deeper_ inside of her. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open in a breathless gasp. That was good, but Cayde wanted better, so he readjusted the leg he had on his shoulder, scooping her knee up higher, spreading her legs farther, leaning in closer to her so he could press his mouth-plates against her lips and _really_ go for it.

Squall managed two full strokes of his cock inside of her in shocked silence.

Then a soft sigh slipped out of her mouth.

He readjusted ever so slightly. Accuracy. Precision. Hunter shit.

Squall’s moan screamed out of her throat as he thrust anew. She grabbed at his back, her fingernails scrabbling across the plates, looking for purchase, digging in on the synth-weave skin in between his plates. Her leg tightened on his shoulder, pulling him closer, her other leg wrapping around his waist. Cayde bit her lip, Solar-Light flaring out of his vents, only to be beaten back by the crush of the Void in Squall.

Her voice gained in volume as he kept his pace and depth, her muscles twitching as he fucked her pretty little Warlock brains out of her.

No great secrets of the universe spilled out of her mouth, only sweet and desperate moans. That was just fine. Cayde couldn’t bring himself to care about much else because the Void was pulsing hard against his chest, forcing more and More of the Solar-Light that fueled him out of him, melting his spine, sending molten pleasure dripping through his entire system. The cold of the Void entranced him, pulled him closer, deeper into the heat of her body…

“ _Gunna_ …” Cayde barely manage to grit out, his voice skipping, dropping and rising in pitch all at once, nowhere near coherent anymore.

“ _YES_!” Squall screamed, pulling him tight to her, Void pulsing from her hands, pushing even the Solar Light in his spine out from him.

A great and terrible cold stole through him and he tore his mouth from hers and pressed his open mouth to her neck, biting down with bruising force as her Void-Light tore away from him, in time with the cascading crash of his Solar-Light’s resurgence and the crushing, overwhelming, chip-melting intensity of his orgasm.

Hers came on the heels of his, a flash of purple fire chasing through his apartment’s living room. One of Squall’s hand had fisted into the carpeting, and there was an ominous, dull sizzling as the Void ate through his floor. Her Light dragged at his, pulling his heat deeper into her, a dizzying crush of feeling and over-sensitivity and the more-static-than-voice “ _Fuu-u-uck-t_ ” that ripped out of his chest was not really his fault.

He pulled himself away from her body so his vents could hiss and finally unload all that unbearable pressure again. Propping himself up on an elbow, Cayde slowly pulled away from her, trying his damndest to memorize every last bit of what he saw. She was still mostly clothed, not having bothered to transmit everything she was wearing off, only the important pieces so that he could fuck her. By contrast, Cayde felt completely exposed, naked down to the absolute last plate.

With a long sigh, Squall let go of his carpet, leaving a half-eaten-through hole that still hummed with Void-Light. There was a flash of white light as she transmatted her own clothes off of her.

Naked, lying on his floor, a flush down her chest and across her throat, Squall grinned at him. Her smile was crooked, and she reached out for him. Cayde sighed, and rolled back into her embrace, lying his body over hers, not caring that it held his vent closed. She was cold enough to soothe the heat that burned in him, and Cayde was a cuddler.

He threw a leg over hers, pressing his thigh against hers, pulling her close, a soft purring sound whirring out of his chest. Squall nuzzled his horn, as it managed to rest just across her forehead. She pressed a kiss to the base of his horn and pulled herself closer to him.

They lay together, entwined and trying to catch their breath and basking in the afterglow.

“Scotch?” Cayde mumbled.

“Oh. Gods yes, Scotch sounds _divine._ ”

Cayde sighed, and relaxed further against her, not moving to get up. He did not want to get up. He wanted to stay here with her. Last time they had gotten up, she had vanished into the night. This time, he’d rather spend some more time with her.

“Or I guess you can tell me where it is and I’ll go get it?” Squall said after another long few moments of him not moving.

With a groan, Cayde sat up.

“Fine. Scotch.”

“Oh hey, your voice stopped shorting out,” she joked, sitting up next to her and jostling him with her shoulder.

There was a flash of Light and her pants and boots were back in place. She stood, extending a hand down to him with a wink.

“Fuc-kt _off_ ,” he groused, his voice, unfortunately, shorting out as he stared at her chest.

Man, organics were _pretty_.

“Scotch is this way, but since I only share with nice people, I think you’re out of luck.”

Cayde moved towards his liquor cabinet, and Squall followed behind him. His pants flashed back into existence, transmatting back into place. The two of them wandered towards his liquor, Squall sidling up behind him, her fingers skating across his lower back. He shivered as pleasure echoed the chill that followed her touch. Her fingers traced nonsense patterns and words and it was easy to lose himself to the pleasant rhythm of her touch.

“Oh, unfortunate,” Squall purred in his ear, kissing his shoulder, her hands tracing up and down his back. “Here I was hoping we could come to some sort of agreement where I go into your bedroom and lay out on your bed and then you come drink expensive scotch off my tits.”

His knees went weak and he caught himself on the cabinet. From behind him, he heard Squall laugh before she sauntered off in the direction of his bedroom.

“You’re really going to kill a man, talking like that,” Cayde grumbled, grabbing his favorite scotch and following behind her.

This. This was a very good day. And it was turning in to a _really_ excellent night.


	3. Solar-Light

 A few days had passed since the last time he’d had the pleasure of Squall in his own bed. She was a firecracker, despite the Void-Light that crackled in her bones, and he ached in wholly delicious ways as he went about his business as Hunter Vanguard. There was a kink somewhere in his back, but he was pretty sure that was from when Squall had had one of _his_ legs up over _her_ shoulder as she had trying to pull all of his Light out of his body through his cock and into her mouth.

It had been. Really good.

He shook his head. As much as he’d like to sit and reminisce, he really did have work to do, and while he was rather curious if he could ever get Squall to agree to see if the two of them could fuck on the Vanguard’s operations table because he’d never properly done it on the table (when it had been Ikora, Zavala and him, it didn’t _really_ count) and it would be fun. Really fun, especially if he could take her right where Zavala stood.

Because that would be hilarious.

And really, really fucking hot.

Just taking her, bending her over Zavala’s little computer screen and fucking her relentlessly. Then turning her around and letting her ride him. Have his legs dangle off the table, stare up at her as he messes up every last one of Zavala’s carefully stacked papers as she did everything she could to make him lose his mind. Then they’d leave a mess and he’d carefully blank the tapes to keep their tryst a mostly-secret thing and the next day he’d spend a lot of time pretending to pay attention to Zavala as he remembered it all over again.

He adjusted his cloak a little self-consciously, very aware of how lucky he was that his plates kept his cock hidden away. Otherwise he was going to have some sort of explaining to do to Ikora, who definitely would catch on to his discomfort and ask coy questions about just who it was that had caught his fancy this decade.

If she found out it was one of her Warlocks, he kind of doubted she would be very okay with it, especially since she had apparently tapped Squall for important Warlock-y business. Ikora never forbade him contact with her Warlocks, but she was a little more hesitant to allow him to be in close with her Warlocks for the same reason Cayde did not really appreciate Zavala making eyes at any of his Hunters.

So he would keep it a secret from Ikora. For now.

His Ghost chirped at him, alerting him to a new message. The fact that the message was not read aloud immediately told Cayde that whatever message he received was of a sensitive nature, and that sent a thrill through him. Sometimes Hunters were doing things that he did not want the other Vanguards knowing about, or getting their own people involved before he was ready to give them the information.

Sometimes all you needed was a Hunter. Or four.

“Cayde, for the third time, did you have a fruitful talk with Squall last night regarding the start of training Solar Hunters and Warlocks?” Ikora’s voice broke through his reverie.

Blinking, Cayde looked up from where he was fiddling with his hands as he was lost in thought, to Ikora, who had clearly been waiting on him to respond for a while. One of her eyebrows was lifted, questioning.

He had not even started to talking to Squall about actually doing anything even remotely related to Vanguard stuff. Not last night, not in any of their other meetings, not once, not even a _little_ bit.

He had shown up at her apartment last night for their “meeting”, cloak hidden, bottle of their scotch tucked up under his arm. Squall had greeted him blearily, hair mussed, dark circles under her eyes. She’d been out running patrols on Venus, the particular burned-machine scent of Vex-death and the ozone of radiolaria hung in the air around her still. He’d nearly dropped the scotch in his haste to get his mouth against her throat, hands coming to frame the back of her neck to keep her close.

Really, he couldn’t be blamed for thinking that she smelled _really_ good. Exos and Vex weren’t particularly keen on each other and the rest of the night had been spent in her shower, naked, him on his knees, with their bottle of scotch shared until it was gone and they staggered back to her bed, sopping wet and _sopping wet_. He’d made a tactical exit out of her window to his waiting jump ship some indeterminate time a few minutes before dawn, her tired Cheshire grin chasing him.

“We have some disagreements on what will work best. She does not have much experience with Hunters,” which was true because Keldrin and Yeti-7 were both Titans and she did not work often with Hunters outside of the Crucible, so he really was not lying. “It will probably take a bit longer before we can come to an appropriate decision on the matter.”

Also not technically wrong.

Ikora seemed to accept this answer, moving on to the next item on their _very_ long list. How was it that they could work all fucking day long and then still have more work to do the next morning? A day off was out of the question, but maybe a day where this meeting didn’t take four fucking hours would be nice.

“Well, as soon as you have found something that works for the both of you, let me know, I would be more than happy to loan you my Warlock so everyone can benefit, as they seemed to have benefitted so far. I would hate for your Hunters to lack the opportunities the Titans have been given.”

Cayde grinned at her and nodded.

“Thanks, appreciated.”

He did mean it - he would love for his Hunters to have the ability to learn from a Warlock, even for a little bit. The patience they may need for such a task may be lacking, but it didn’t seem like Squall had much problems getting a Hunter to come to heel.

 _Fuck_ , not the time for that. Not the time for that right now but maybe when this meeting was over he could find where Squall was and set up another impromptu meeting. He’d been meaning to try out some spreader bars for him or for her or one and then the other, just because he’d been wanting to see if she would be interested in something like that.

Warlocks were capricious things that did not often give over their control to anyone, for any reason.

Squall had shown a remarkable alacrity and ability towards being malleable in all things, and had allowed Cayde to make his own minor dominance plays. Not that he was ever really serious about them, he just liked the game of it, the back and forth, the way she would let him take her but with a grin that promised him that she would remember this and make him beg later on.

Later, later, fucking, later.

Oh god, yes, he’d fuck her later.

He kept his mouth shut, doing his level best to focus on what he was doing and the work he had to do still before he could go find Squall again. Maybe she would be busy, but that was fine, he could entertain himself easily.

His Ghost chimed at him again, another message in, another one not read aloud. Cayde didn’t think anything of it. A few reports here and there, maybe a message someone wanted to send but didn’t want the entire Vanguard hearing it. Nothing unusual. Hell, Zavala and Ikora’s Ghosts chimed as well, and none of them even flinched. It was normal, and just faded into the background noise of their meeting.

His Ghost chimed probably ten or fifteen more times throughout the rest of the meeting. Cayde did his level best to keep his thoughts from wandering too far back in the direction of Squall so that he could really get his work done and put his Hunters where they needed to be.

Because the faster he got his work done, the faster he could get to where _he_ belonged between Squall’s thighs.

The meeting adjourned, and then the post-meeting meeting also, eventually, was over. His Ghost chimed at him with more urgency as the evening went on, and as much as he really wanted to check in on his Hunters, if he spent the time doing that, he was going to have such a long talk with either Ikora or Zavala and he really, supremely, could not stomach a third meeting today.

He made his excuses and his goodbyes and strode out of the Vanguard’s meeting hall. He nodded to Arcite 99-40, noting the interesting lack of Shaxx, though Cayde supposed that it was past the time for Crucible matches to be active, so it was not that unusual. Probably. Rare, but not unusual.

The walk back to his room was a short one, or at least it felt short. He was preoccupied with thoughts of the day, of checking to see if Squall was available. The messages could wait just a little bit longer, until he kicked his boots off and maybe had another bottle of scotch transmatted over.

Dramatically, in a flash of white light as his cape was whisked away, he collapsed onto his couch, flinging his legs up over the armrest and lying out completely. He would need to check in on his Hunters for a not-really-a-meeting-meeting, and then see what he could find for dinner because he felt like eating today.

Then he’d see if Squall wanted to come over. If she was busy actually trying to get a group of Solar Hunters and Warlocks together for some training, it was probable that she was actually working on what Ikora had asked the two of them to do. And as much as he wanted to see her, if there was actual work to be done, he was going to sit and eat at home instead.

He stretched out the kinks in his neck, trying to get the stressors of the day to roll off of him. If Squall wasn’t working on something important, hopefully she could come over and help him work some stress and muscle tension out. And then back in.

“Cayde, Squall has sent you twenty three messages. Your Hunters sent you four.”

The servos in his chest gave a jarring whine as he processed the idea. Twenty three messages. Twenty three from Squall. She’d only ever sent him one or two messages in a day, setting up a time to meet, and where, or agreeing to dinner at one place or another. Twenty three? It was either good or really bad, and if it had been bad, she would have had the message read out loud.

 _Fuck_.

“Give…me the Hunter’s reports first,” he grit out. He needed to focus, talk to his Hunters, make sure they were doing well, that everything was going to plan and that information was passed to the appropriate people.

The reports took another hour or so to get through, as Cayde checked in on those who had submitted them to make sure what was done, was done well. He might grouse constantly about having to be in meetings and at that table to take reports instead of being out in the field doing the things that get reported on, but he did, genuinely and earnestly, want to take care of his Hunters, and despite the needling curiosity in his brain-chips, he took his time to answer every message and follow-up.

Then he got to Squall’s messages. All twenty three of them.

His Ghost started with the earliest, which was just a picture of Squall and her fireteam in the middle of a Strike. Keldrin, the Awoken Titan was wreathed in flames, holding massive hammers, and Yeti-7 was lovingly flipping the massive Ogre they were facing down the double bird. He couldn’t see Squall’s face, she was wearing that same feathered helmet, but she had two gloved fingers up in the peace sign and despite the chaos, there was no doubt that she was enjoying what she was doing.

Cayde saved the picture and put in a request for a picture frame for it. It was a cute picture, alright, sue him.

The next one was a video, still showing Squall as she panned her Ghost across the field of battle. Dead Hive littered the area, and in the background he heard Keldrin laughing and then a knight’s sword began waving in the background. Squall signed something over her shoulder and got an answering laugh from Yeti-7 that guttered out at the same time a high crack of a vandal’s shock rifle sounded.

Squall snapped into a defensive stance, an auto-rifle appearing in her hands. The laughing from Keldrin stopped as well, and Squall reached to turn the video off, but before she could finish, Keldrin’s shocked gasp cut out and the panicked “LAST GUARDIAN STANDING” flashed across the screen. Squall’s shoulders squared to the threat.

It didn’t help.

A shock-rifle bullet smashed through her face plate and annihilated the back of her helmet and skull.

Her body went rigid, shoulders jumping and back straightening in shock. Cayde couldn’t help the instinctive jerk forward, his hands coming up to grab onto the screen. The moment where gravity was about to win over her body and pull her down, dooming another team to death or darkness was the moment when the video exploded into flames and stopped.

“There are still twenty one messages Cayde, you know she’s alright,” his Ghost said as the next message loaded in, soothing the ragged edge of worry that had stolen over him.

“Right, yeah, yeah, yeahyeah, of course.”

He relaxed only fractionally while the next video loaded in.

Squall was looking directly into the Ghost, rolling her eyes. The field was now littered with Fallen as well, but no more shots rang out. The fight was over.

Her helmet was shoved up under her arm – it would need some pretty heavy repairs, but Keldrin and Yeti-7 were standing behind her, posing like it was going to be another picture. Squall winked, and let the video go as the other two behind her posed and waited…and waited...and waited…and then Yeti-7 broke, laughing and realizing the game. Keldrin shoved Squall’s shoulder forward with a barking laugh, and the video cut.

A breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in left him in a rush. They were okay. They were okay and joking about it all so they really were okay.

The next messages were just text, and his Ghost presented them all at once:

                > What’s your thoughts on tattoos?

                > We’re fine, seriously. But tattoos. After today we think we deserve some team bonding time.

                > It’ll be fun to see you after these. I like ‘em. Team matches now.

> The Traveler is good and my face doesn’t itch anymore.

> I might get more of these. Not now but yenno. Eventually. Let you find something new.

> Keldrin says I can’t get another tattoo until I beat his streak in the Crucible. Bitch.

                > Well I hope you think they’re cute.

                > Burnin’ night at the Titan’s Fall. We’re all going. Your fire’d be ‘preciated.

                > that was a serious invitation, I want you to come you don’t even have to pretend you know me

                > C’mon, don’t leave me hanging.

                > caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYEde

                >cayde c’mon cayde c’monnnnnn. Come daaaaance.

And they just kept on in the same vein, a wheedling, obviously not-sober tone winding through her words. The last message was another picture, one of a club that looked like it was burning and Squall, head turning, hair flying, wearing a –

“Where’s the Titan’s Fall club, I need to be there right now.”

“No weapons are allowed, no armor or Guardian-identifying clothing, including cloaks, marks and bonds, casual attire only. It’s just off of Midtown, north two blocks from the boundary, down some stairs to the left of the big graffiti.”

Cayde groaned and got off the couch quickly to change. No use in transmatting everything everywhere when he was perfectly capable of getting dressed and undressed himself. It had been a good while since he had gone anywhere not wearing at least some indicator of his position as Vanguard, or at the very least, a Guardian.

Regular clothes felt…odd. He wasn’t necessarily completely uncomfortable in them, but it was very different to be wearing a loose shirt, a leather jacket and a pair of jeans instead of his usual Vanguard regalia-nee–armor. No holsters, no knives, no weapons, no nothing. Just an Exo ready for a night out on the town.

“Do I look good or what?” he said, winking at himself in the mirror.

His Ghost just rolled its eye at him, vanishing into motes of Light.

“No, hey, wait seriously, do I look good?”

There was no response. Cayde pouted, looked himself over once again in the mirror, frowned, grabbed a belt with a fancy buckle that was in no way related to the Vanguard but did have his favorite ramen shop’s logo done in nice enamel. Nothing that would break the rules, but he didn’t feel right walking around without something on his hips, and a weight belt suited him rather nicely.

“Alright, send a message to Squall that I’m on my way.”

His Ghost chirped assent, and that was that. It was time to get going.

With one last look at himself in the mirror, Cayde left his apartment and made his way towards Titan’s Fall. His Ghost appeared at his side when he started getting lost, giving him directions and letting him find his way through.

The sun was long set by the time he got to the club. The graffiti that had been mentioned was a massive mural of a bunch of Titans, in and out of their armor, flexing in all sorts of alluring manners. Cayde wasn’t usually much one to find Titans that attractive – not that that meant much, he’d still spent a fair bit of time in various Titans’ beds, he was pretty old – but that was a pretty fucking hot mural.

Not the reason he was here, as much as he enjoyed looking at art, he was rather hoping to see a different piece.

Naked.

In his bed.

Guardians liked it when you referred to them as art pieces. Especially Warlocks, who did so much of their work in pursuit of beauty, but Titans and Hunters could be wooed just as easily. Squall appreciated the comments, at least.

He shook his head. Not the time. He was going to go find Squall and see what this night was all about. Having never had been to this particular club, he was curious as to what it was that he should expect from it. This was a newer club, it couldn’t have been more than a decade old, and Cayde wasn’t usually much one for exploring new places when the only ones had served him so well.

Ducking through the door, he was not accosted by the usual cacophony of music and sound that he expected out of a club like this. There was a desk in front of him, an unarmored Awoken Guardian sitting lazily behind it, her feet up on the desk, leaning back in her chair. She didn’t even look up to him, just pointed up to the sign over her head.

_NEWCOMERS PAY 10,000 GLIMMER UPON FIRST ENTRY_

_NO REFUNDS_

_NO QUESTIONS_

Cayde frowned, and opened his mouth to object. Not that the glim was a problem, it was just a lot to demand from him when he had no guarantees of anything worth ten thousand glimmer inside. The Awoken behind the desk flicked her eyes to him and rolled them. Cayde clicked his mouth plates closed and silently, begrudgingly paid the asked-for price.

She grinned at him, and the sign over her head flickered once before changing. Light-up, mock fire illuminated the board in an entirely gauche display that Cayde recognized as excessive and also just really cool. He needed one of these for his apartment.

_WELCOME TO TITAN’S FALL._

_TONIGHT IS BURNIN’ NIGHT._

_SOLAR LIGHT ONLY._

“Anything else?” he groused, trying his best not to sound impressed with the display, now that the command to not ask questions was gone.

“No, you should be good to go. Don’t expect anyone to treat you different. Bar’s to the left, dance floor is obvious, no booths unless you pay for one or know the guy. Be courteous. Drinks are free.”

“ _Free?!_ ” Cayde parroted, shocked.

“You…did just pay ten thousand glimmer. So yes. Free.”

He blinked. Alright, so not free. Ten thousand glimmer worth of booze was a lot though. He could have a really excellent series of nights on ten thousand glimmers worth of booze. Especially if Squall was around.

The Awoken Guardian jerked her head towards the door behind her and to the right.

“G’on then.”

He really did not need any further encouragement. Squall was somewhere in there. And he was going to find her. This time, he was going to get the drop on her, and that thrilled him.

The door opened as he approached it, and _heat_ and _sound_ washed over him, the overwhelming crush of Solar-Light blistering his plates, threatening to melt him before he even got close enough to see where it was that Squall was at. He shuddered and pressed forward. The music was loud enough that all he could truly hear was the bass-beat, and it jerked him along in time.

Cayde managed to keep his feet underneath him for as long as it took for him to get to the bar, his leather jacket overwhelmingly warm on his skin, but without it, he’d probably be burning the bare skin of the Guardians he was brushing past.

The Light dragged at him, building itself faster and hotter inside of his chest. He couldn’t blush, but as he rounded a corner to the bar, he finally saw the dance floor.

It was on fire.

That wasn’t hyperbole. It was on fire. Guardians were burning up, Solar-Light overflowing from them, sheets of shimmering fire hovering around their bodies. The walls of the building were on fire, rolling pillars of flame that only added to the building feeling of _Too Much_ in his chest. He didn’t even have the chance to order before the bartender was pressing an iced glass of…something into his palm with a wink before floating away.

Cayde clutched the cold glass like it was his only lifeline, leaning up against the bar and looking out over the writhing mass of Guardians grinding against each other. It was an alluring sight, in all honesty. Bodies moving in sync to the demands of fire and song, and all of them in the prime of their fitness, all of them burning up in the Traveler’s Light, all of them, to the last one.

He found himself downing his drink quickly, enjoying the feeling of the cold sliding down his chest into his stomach. The coolness made him miss Squall, miss the refreshing touch of the Void to contrast the burning heat he carried in him. But there was no respite here. The alcohol burned, and warmed where it had just cooled, and before he could even think about moving onto the dance floor, another cold glass of alcohol was pressed against his palm, and that too vanished as he tried to figure out just what it was that he wanted to do.

He couldn’t see Squall, and he was not really certain that he wanted to risk wading into that firestorm on the dance floor if he was just going to end up in a massive multi-Guardian orgy.

Wait.

No he was very okay with that.

“No drinks on the floor,” the bartender muttered when he made a move towards the dance floor.

Blinking, Cayde turned back to the bartender who looked down at the newly filled drink he cradled in his hand.

“I don’t like cleaning up slag. The glass melts. Finish your drink and then go.”

Without question, Cayde drank the entire glass down. Like before, the cool of the liquid was quickly combated by the heat of the alcohol, and then his own Light’s heat burning up his chest again. Fuck this was good.

“Better. Another or are you actually going to dance now?”

This bartender had none of Terra’s easy sort of banter. Cayde pushed his empty glass back towards them, petulantly. He wasn’t drunk yet, and he kind of wanted to be, but the Light was pulling him and Squall was somewhere in that mess. He wanted to see her, she had invited him, specifically, but the entire dance floor was on fire and he was just as liable to find her as to get distracted.

“Looking for someone. I see. Alright. Well let’s get you another drink while you wait.”

He halfway wanted to wave them off, but they were returning with another drink far, far too quickly. Cayde could not feel his drunkenness upon him, even though he knew it was likely hovering in the background, just waiting for him to really make a move. The third drink he took his time with, leaning back against the bar and looking out over the dance floor.

The music was loud and demanding, and watching a melee of bodies move to it, with all the heat in the air, Cayde could see the allure of it. His heart pounded and slowly, slowly, he felt his heartbeat turn over to the beat of the music. The fire started building up in him, the burning starting to overwhelm his better senses, and the alcohol was definitely not helping.

For a moment, he thought he saw Squall on the floor, the furred ruff at her neck – the thing he had seen in the photo that had urged him to actually come to this club – mussed and obscuring her face. But he could not be sure and before he could get a better look, the Guardian was gone, taken back into the crush of bodies and Solar-Fire.

He followed, finishing his drink in a long pull, moving towards where he thought he had seen Squall.

Walking onto the dance floor was like summoning his Golden Gun. A wall of heat and overwhelming pressure hit him square in the chest, hard enough to start dragging at his better thoughts, and kicking the last shreds of sobriety that could’ve been rumbling around in his brain-chips right out of his skull. His Light protected him from burning properly, but it was ungodly hot, crushed between Solar-Light and the bodies of Guardians.

A Guardian grabbed him by the hips from behind, their hands sliding up his side, as their mouth slid down the back of his neck, leaving a trail of fire in their wake, both literal and metaphorical.

His spine melted, metaphorically, and he slumped against the body in front of him. There was a laugh and the Guardian in front of him turned around and embraced him, pressing their body to his front as the Guardian behind him did the same.

Honestly, really, he _was_ looking for Squall, but the fire was burning blister-hot, the drinks were catching up to him, the music was eardrum-bursting loud and two _really_ nice bodies were grinding up against him, moving him to their beat. The Guardian in front of him – Awoken? – worked their fingers through his belt-loops, rolling their hips against his, arching away, leaning back against the Guardian behind them.

He could not really focus on whatever it was that he had come to do, because the bodies were crushing against him, petting him, mouths and hands travelling in a delicious pattern across his body. He could only move with them, reach out and run a hand down the side of the Guardian in front of him, tailings of fire skating across their clothes. Why the _fuck_ had he decided to wear a leather jacket to a club that was on fire?

His breath caught in his chest and he was happy, so happy that the music was too loud for anyone to hear the embarrassing clicking sounds that were ripping out of his chest. The Guardian behind him was an Exo as well, or at least had a mechanical hand that reached out to wrap around his throat and pull him backwards against their hard body.

Maybe he should be more focused on finding Squall, but it was _so_ hot and they were driving anything even remotely resembling sense away with their movements against and across and _down_ his body. The fire was overwhelming, the heat and Solar-Light that burned through them all was utterly intoxicating.

He didn’t have his gun on him, but the critical point was building up, Light overwhelming and without anything to keep it constrained, he felt it burn out of him, joining the conflagration that scorched the air above this orgy of sensation.

The Guardian behind him groaned something _most_ appreciative as his Solar-Light hit their body. The mouth against the back of his neck bit down harder, hips rocked up against his ass, and Cayde made a clicking purr as his _everything_ rejoiced in the crush of feeling and overwhelming heat. This was good. This was really, really good. This was probably the best time he’d had in a club since -

“Oh I’d know _that_ sound anywhere,” rasped a not at all unfamiliar voice in his ear, opposite where the mouth was digging into his shoulder.

Cayde tried to turn his head to look at _her_ , but the Awoken in front of him grabbed his horn (his beautiful, beautiful horn) and pulled his head back to front so they could press their soft mouth to his mouth-plates. Really, he tried to pay attention to the fact that _she_ was right there, but the Awoken’s mouth was demanding and biting and the Guardian behind him was toying with his belt-buckle, their thumbs sliding down beneath the hem of his pants just barely far enough to make his eyes start rolling before pulling away again.

She laughed, leaned in, kissed his cheek, and he felt her Solar-Light burning his face, a kiss of heat and overwhelming pressure before she was gone again, whisked deeper into the morass of body and heat. He’d have to go find her.

Later, though. A little bit later.

Right now, he was really quite content with the way these two Guardians were working him up. Their hands did not stray beneath his clothing, just the tease of the intimation of doing so, nor did they try and actually make any sort of play at asking him for anything more than what they were doing in that moment. They danced, and other Guardians pressed in around them, smushing them together, crushing up against them all, pushing them closer together.

Delirium overwhelmed.

The heat, the alcohol, the bodies, the music, the _Fire_ , all of it was going to drive him fucking insane before he had anything even remotely “together” enough to go find where Squall went but he found himself caring less and less about that because it was just too fucking good.

Ten thousand glimmer might’ve been a lot to drop on this, but he could not really find a reason to regret it in this moment. It was just one long continuous burning in his chest and he never wanted it to stop.

The hands pulled away from his chest after some amount of time – he really could not tell how long they had been there, or if they had been replaced – the Guardian in front of him had always been human, right? But there was a moment where the crowd seemed to part and his gaze drifted to the side and he saw her.

Squall.

Her arm was slung around the neck of the Guardian behind her, both of them wreathed in Solar-Light. She grinned at him, her new tattoos wrinkling with the movement.

Her face had been painted with blue ink, mimicking the fins of her Ghost, an arrow between, and slightly above her eyebrows, another centered on her chin, and a matching pair just under her eyes, on the apples of her cheeks, all etched into her flesh with deep blue that came passing close to matching her hair color.

There was that, and then there was the fact that she was wearing Shaxx’s fur ruff around her neck. The straps hung off her shoulders, and her top was…mostly burned off, smoking as her body burned. Her body, her glorious body, the sinew and muscle were all alight with Solar-Light and he could not stop the slack-jawed stare as she danced. Squall’s hips swayed from side to side, enchanting with her slow, leisurely movements. Her pants were hanging low off of her hips, slipping and burning like everything else around her.

She winked, and the man behind her huffed at her, chuckling and beckoning Cayde closer.

“Fuc-kt _me_ ,” he hissed, rushing in towards Squall, mouth dropping open.

Squall grinned, reaching for him, pulling him tight as he pressed himself up against her burning body.

“Thought-kt you _died_ today, Squall, thought-kt you _fell_ , thought-kt everything went-kt wrong,” he mumbled, drunken relief flooding through him.

“Squall? Fall? No, never, not her, not the shining star of my Crucible,” the man behind her rumbled, reaching beyond Squall to put a hand on Cayde’s hips and pull him closer to her.

To them.

“Shaxx?” Cayde mumbled against Squall’s mouth.

The Light felt familiar and Squall was wearing Shaxx’s ruff and he was properly drunk out of his mind so he really couldn’t be blamed for the slower mental processing in the moment.

“He caught on!” Shaxx rumbled against Squall’s neck, his voice loud and brassy enough to echo through her body for Cayde to hear.

Squall turned to kiss the side of Cayde’s face, wrapping an arm around his waist, grinding against him. Cayde blinked, looking down, away from Shaxx, burying his face in Shaxx’s ruff (it still smelled of heavy ammo) and trying to keep his whirring under control. Otherwise he was going to really embarrass himself.

She moved effortlessly between and against them both, her body rolling back and forth between Cayde and Shaxx. Cayde’s eyes fluttered closed, and he lost himself in the movement of it all. Shaxx’s fingers worked through his belt-loops on his left side, keeping him penned in, incapable of moving away, even as Squall looped her arm up under his leather jacket, her fingers splaying out between his shoulder-blades, holding his right side tight. He was trapped there, held by two incredibly capable and ridiculously hot Guardians.

Trapped.

Oh yeah, definitely _trapped_ , as Squall let out a delighted moan and Shaxx chuckled against her neck. Cayde felt Shaxx grind against Squall’s ass, and then her hips pressed against his, echoing Shaxx’s movement against him.

“Fu- _uu­_ ­-ck-t,” Cayde grit out as Squall bit his neck.

Her Solar-Light roared out of her, an inferno that slammed into his chest. From behind her, Shaxx gave a needy, guttering moan, pulling Cayde and her both closer to his chest, trying to take the embers of Squall’s inferno into him. Shaxx reached up to wrap a hand around Squall’s throat, tightening and pulling her mouth away from Cayde’s neck. He cried out, coldness rushing in in the absence of her heat. Her flames were addictive, dragging at him and pulling at the fire that burned in his chest, urging more and more heat to rise up in him.

He struggled to find his train of thought, but he was watching Shaxx pull Squall back against his chest, and her eyes were rolling as Solar-Light licked across her skin.

Cayde dove in, pressing his mouth between Shaxx’s fingers, biting at Squall’s neck until he was certain there were bruises. Squall’s head snapped back against Shaxx’s shoulder, the fires burned hotter and hotter around them as Shaxx’s fire added to the conflagration.

Squall scrambled to try and get her hands on Cayde, pulling him tight to her by his belt, demanding and harsh as Cayde worked at putting his hands on her waist, her soft skin covering hard muscles. Organics were so _fucking_ pretty. He kept his mouth on her neck, leaving a pattern of lines down her throat. Shaxx helpfully moved his fingers out of Cayde’s way.

He felt his chest grow warm, not from the Solar-Light, but from the careful and conscious consideration Shaxx was showing to let him work delicious sin across her neck. Squall couldn’t move from between them, and her squirming was delicious and futile. Her hand scrambled at the back of Cayde’s neck, trying to find purchase and pull him closer, even as Shaxx’s other hand slid between her hips and Cayde’s. His index finger slid behind the lip of Cayde’s belt buckle, his thumb dipped beneath the hem of Squall’s pants, while the rest of his fingers pressed against the inside of her thigh.

Cayde moaned as Shaxx pulled Squall and him together, moving his mouth back to Squall’s. She mewled against his mouth, her tongue flicking in between his mouth-plates, dragging him deeper into the delicious, drugging infinity that yawned in the flames.

His Solar-Light roared again, the fire around him burning bright and brighter as the overwhelming pressure unloaded once again. His cock was painfully hard, and everything in him ached for relief. The Light overwhelming venting out of him was nowhere near enough to make him feel at ease, but it was all he had.

Guardians crushed in around him, and Squall, and Shaxx. Whether or not they recognized him and Shaxx, Cayde could not bring himself to care, because Squall was still moving her body in long, sinuous rolls against his. Thinking was too much for him. This was all too much because there was goddamn too fucking much and any other eloquences.

He wanted to fuck and be fucked by both of them. Either of them.

And he managed to grind out something to that effect, but it was not something particularly coherent because there was a crush of bodies around him and he had passed over the threshold of “overstimulated” a long, long while back. There was nothing but _need_ in him now, nothing but the desperation and burn and ache of it.

Squall’s Light ripped out of her again, and Shaxx, behind her still, collapsed forward, nearly knocking the three of them all to the ground. It was only the other Guardians around them, the wall of bodies on fire that kept them standing. If Cayde was not certain that staying here for days on end would more than likely end with him just exploding into motes of Light, he absolutely could see himself staying in this blissful state of absolute euphoria.

Shaxx groaned, and turned Squall around so he could kiss her properly, leaving Cayde facing her back. He pressed in, rolling his hips against her delightfully plush ass. This time _he_ got to bite at the back of her neck, one of his hands sliding down the front of her body, slipping under her pants, his hands skimming across her hips. She shuddered and leaned back against him as Shaxx’s mouth worked across her throat.

His fire blistered the air around them all, and a heavy bell rang out as Shaxx dropped a heavy hammer out of the Light, between Squall’s feet before Shaxx was kneeling down in front of her, his hands framing her hips as he bit the back of Cayde’s knuckles.

This was…real good.

Squall put her weight on Cayde, rocking her hips up against Shaxx’s mouth. He watched hungrily from over Squall’s shoulder as Shaxx left a pattern of bruises across her hips and low stomach. She panted breathlessly in Cayde’s ear, and his cock rutted _hard_ against her ass as Shaxx pushed her back against him. Cayde braced himself, giving Shaxx and Squall both the best sort of platform for whatever it was that they were doing.

He watched as Shaxx’s fire licked up her body, catching the remnants of Squall’s shirt on fire, burning it all away, leaving her all but topless. Her pants seemed immune to the fires that burned around them all. God, god fucking damn, god damn it all this was the _best_.

“Apartment, back to the apartment, I wanna – _please_ – apartment!” Squall panted in Cayde’s ear and he bit her shoulder, over one of the marks Shaxx had already left, trying to keep himself quiet as the thought of having both of them for the night.

Shaxx chuckled and stood slowly, dragging his mouth and hands up her chest until his mouth met hers once again. He kissed her, long and slow, despite the heat that burned around them, and Cayde really, really wished he had thought to ask them both how they felt about exhibitionism before now because he was honestly ready for any sort of fucking and it didn’t much matter if every Guardian in here knew who he was, the veneer of anonymity was enough. Besides, no one expected _him_ , of all Vanguards to be particularly subtle about who he fucked.

Maybe he’d been caught. Maybe he’d have to explain something to Ikora or Zavala about something _someone_ reported to them. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but it didn’t matter right then because Shaxx was chuckling and peering over Squall’s shoulder to look at Cayde, grinning lazily before leaning in and pressing a kiss to the bridge of Cayde’s nose.

Cayde blinked, and grinned crookedly back at Shaxx.

“Shall we?” Shaxx purred to Cayde, his eyes dragging slowly across Cayde’s mouth in a way that made Cayde’s processors go into overdrive.

Guardians liked being considered to be dangerous and hot and sexy and whatever else and Cayde was not an exception. Being looked at like _that_ made his spine light up with pleasure and the lights in his mouth flicker the brightest orange he could muster.

He couldn’t think fast enough to make a comment. Shaxx pulled away, looking back to Squall, who immediately reached up to kiss Shaxx again, her mouth working against his. Squall kissed Shaxx like she was starving and the only thing she could consume was him.

“If you don’t say yes, Cayde, I am going to, I’m just going to, I don’t know. I don’t know but say _yes_ ,” Squall breathed as soon as Shaxx pulled away and let her have her mouth back.

“Yes, yes, god, yes,” he muttered, pulling Squall back against his hips so he could get one…or two…more good, long grinding ruts against her ass.

Shaxx rumbled a chuckling agreement against Squall’s neck, and then slowly pulled them out of the crush of bodies. He followed slowly behind Squall and Shaxx, trying his best to keep up as his attention kept getting drawn away by the other Guardians who reached out to him and tried to tempt him back into the fray with their damnable, sexy, amazing bodies.

 _Fuck,_ were Guardians pretty things.

But even if he wanted to stay and dance, Squall was in front of him, being guided out of the morass of bodies by Shaxx and he desperately wanted to follow them more than stay where he was. They looked divine and as nice as the other Guardians were, there was nothing that could compare to watching Shaxx and Squall.

Walking out of the orgy of bodies was like walking into a freezing room, the sudden lack of heat overwhelming in the same way that the heat had been at first. Cayde didn’t know which one he preferred, because without the sensor-degrading heat he was rather left sobering up trying to figure out what the fuck it was that was going to happen from here because they were both definitely promising something and he wanted to be involved - but something nagged at him.

Then again, Squall was all but shirtless, with Shaxx’s ruff accentuating her neck, grinning lopsidedly at him as the last curl of fire burned across her freshly tattooed cheek, and Shaxx was next to her, an arm looped easily around her waist, his face half-buried in her hair as he whispered _something_ to her, but both of them were looking at him expectantly and he...he wanted. Whatever they had, he wanted.

He staggered forward and Squall reached for him, wrapping her fingers around one of his beltloops and tugging him along with them as the three of them made their way back towards the bar. The bartender looked between the three of them and without even asking anything, poured three drinks and placed them all on the counter.

With a grin, Squall sauntered towards the drinks, dragging Cayde along with her, not that he objected because, goddamn, yes. Yes, absolutely. Squall downed two of the drinks before he could even try and reach for one for himself. She grinned lopsidedly at him, her fingers gently caressing the lip of the last glass. She didn’t even offer the drink to him, just stared at him. Deliciously, slowly, beautifully, her gaze dragged down his face, and neck, and chest, and he wanted – ached for more.

More.

Shaxx reached in from behind Squall and grabbed the drink before Cayde could get to it. Like Squall, Shaxx downed the drink, but with how big Shaxx was, he doubted that one glass would affect Shaxx as much as the two glasses would do to the comparatively small Squall. One of Shaxx’s arms wrapped easily around Squall’s waist, and her eyes fluttered close. She leaned back against him, her body relaxing into him.

Cayde stared. He needed a picture of that, he wanted to be in that picture and absentmindedly, he stepped forward to kiss Squall again. She kissed him gently and delicately, her lips working across his mouth plates. Her mouth tasted like sweet liquor, one he couldn’t place and didn’t want to know where it was from because its taste would only disappoint him by contrast to the flavor that he had now.

Her tongue slipped between his plates, and he could not help but to grind out a shuddering moan as she reached up to grab at his horn and pull his mouth tighter to hers. From behind her, he heard Shaxx mumble something appreciative. This was going to be just so fucking good.

“Whose place?” Shaxx mumbled into Squall’s neck.

Oh yes, it was happening. That was the plan, they were actually moving forward with it, it wasn’t a fever dream of the dance floor. They were going to - it was going to –

“ _Mine_ ,” came her response as she pulled Cayde’s face down to her neck, opposite the side Shaxx was dominating with his mouth.

Cayde did not know if she was simply making a declarative about him being _hers_ in that moment or suggesting that they go to her apartment, and really it didn’t matter because they were going to end up somewhere with a modicum of privacy so they could get to some really delicious work. Shaxx took it as answer enough and after a long moment of letting his hands run over Squall’s body, he finally took a step away and tugged the back of her belt to get her to break away from Cayde and follow him out of the club.

Squall’s fingers caught Cayde’s wrist and, together, the three of them left the club. He was not near as drunk as he’d ever been, and without the burning heat of a couple dozen other Guardians the need that burned in him was less frantic, but far from abated.

Shaxx and him had never seen eye to eye ever since the, uh…incident. Shaxx looked down on cheating and Cayde just really liked winning. But with Squall squashed between the two of them it was pretty hard to remember the old gripe between the two of them because there were much better uses of his attention.

The lounging Guardian behind the desk grinned at the three of them as they strode out of Titan’s Fall, and the sign over their head flickered to a rather abstract view of the three of them crushed together on the dance floor. Cayde kind of wanted that as a picture to keep for himself too. There had been a lot of pretty things he had gotten to see tonight. He’d have to try and remember to send a message to ask if there was a copy of that picture that he could have

The three of them walked to Squall’s apartment. Smaller than either Cayde’s or Shaxx’s would be, but home court advantage to Squall was something they could be amendable to. By the time they made it to her apartment, it was late in the night. Closer to dawn than to midnight, they did not have too terribly much time allotted to them before Shaxx would have to go start the Crucible and Cayde would have to report to the Vanguard desk for work.

Not much for that. They’d have to make the best of what time they had.

Which is of course why as soon as the door to Squall’s room was open, Shaxx had her hefted in his arms and stormed towards her room. Cayde wondered, briefly, after how Shaxx knew where Squall’s bedroom was without guidance, because Squall’s mouth was firmly on Shaxx’s and he seemed completely unbothered by her obstruction.

Cayde made sure her door was shut and locked behind them, and then hustled towards Squall’s bedroom.

Shaxx had Squall already pinned down on her bed, his huge body covering hers as his hand slid down under her pants. Her shirt, what remained of it after the club’s burning and Shaxx’s touches, was rucked up over her bare breasts and his mouth was covering the peak of one of her breasts. Cayde’s Ghost chirped at him, some message or another coming in that he was _absolutely_ going to ignore in favor of climbing into bed on the other side of Squall.

She welcomed him back into her bed with a delirious sigh, reaching up to loop an arm around the back of his neck and pulling him down to her mouth. Cayde moaned brokenly, sliding a hand across her stomach, slipping his fingers across her pants button and zipper, feeling Shaxx’s hand moving under the fabric. Cayde’s thumb carefully pushed the fabric apart, deftly undoing her pants, freeing up space for Cayde’s hand to join Shaxx’s in driving Squall up the wall.

Squall bit his mouth-plate, a breathless whimper spilling out of her lips. It was a sweet, sweet sound, and carefully, Cayde slipped his hand next to Shaxx’s, wrapping around Squall’s thigh, pulling her legs wide to give Shaxx more room to maneuver his fingers up into her, rubbing slowly at her clit. Her hips worked fruitlessly, straining against their combined grip keeping her in place.

Cayde kept his mouth pressed to hers, purring and clicking as he watched – or more like, felt – her struggle against the pleasure he and Shaxx were foisting upon her. Her thigh, soft skin over hard muscle, tensed and relaxed as Shaxx’s fingers worked deeper and deeper into her. She rolled her hips as best she could with two men holding her down to her bed.

Her mouth worked sin against his mouth-plates, her lips and tongue making it harder and harder for him to even pretend like he could pay attention to literally anything.

“Who do you want first, Squall?” Shaxx growled against her breast, looking up from his work to capture Squall’s and Cayde’s attention both.

“ _Both_ ,” she snarled against Cayde’s mouth, biting his mouth plate again before moving to sit up.

Cayde’s chest vented pressure with a sharp hiss as he understood what it was that Squall was suggesting for their night. He wasn’t much a man for sharing but dawn was approaching and if they took any more time with this, they’d be late showing up for their work in the morning. Showing up tired was easy enough to handle, but showing up late – multiple important people showing up late – there would be questions, and when Cayde was sleepy, he wasn’t necessarily the best with coming up with lies on the fly.

Squall kneeled on her bed, stripping out of the rest of her clothes in a flash of Light. Shaxx grumbled an appreciative “ _Fuck_ ” under his breath as he looked at her. She looked between the two of them, grinning, her eyes blown out wide with arousal.

“Where?” Cayde managed to click out, his voice grinding as he tried to keep his excitement under control.

It’d been a while since he’d had the chance for something like this, and with the Solar-Light still burning in his chest, and the now well-known dips and curves of Squall’s body on display, he was having a touch of a problem trying to be particularly eloquent or coherent. He just really, really wanted to get down to it.

“You’re the more visual of us, Cayde, so you should take her front,” Shaxx rumbled, grinning as he sat up, wreathed in Light himself, as his clothes vanished as well.

Shaxx pressed a kiss under Squall’s jaw, his hand fanning across the back of her neck. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she melted into his touch. Cayde watched, his own clothes flickering off of him in a single flash. He couldn’t even find it within himself to be mad at Shaxx calling him out for being a visual guy. It wasn’t like Squall looked bad from behind but he had been quietly hoping that Squall wanted him at her front, and having the decision made in a way that favored the sort of things he liked most.

Squall tilted her head, and invited Cayde to move further onto the bed. He did not need much encouragement to slide into place. Squall settled her knees on either side of his hips, leaning down to press a kiss to the very tip of his horn, leaving him staring up at the valley between her breasts. What a good goddamn view.

Squall leaned down, settling her hips atop Cayde’s with a wry grin. Shaxx slid into place behind her, carefully threading his legs between hers and Cayde’s. For a man as large as Shaxx, he certainly made it look and feel easy to do.

Cayde wondered if this had been done before, because the two of them seemed completely and totally at ease with moving with each other and around him for their combined goal. Of fucking. He did not want to really question what was happening because really, who was he to ask anything. Squall slid herself down onto his cock, her eyes rolling and lip curling up into an ecstatic grin.

His cock sank deeper and deeper into her, until her hips were pressed flush to his. His breath caught in his chest as he just reveled in the feeling of his cock inside of her. She was sopping wet, and her inner muscles slowly milked her pleasure from him. He gave an experimental short thrust into her, and watched as Squall’s eyes fluttered and her grin grew wider. Cayde rather thought he could do a lot of work if he got to see that expression on her face more often. The new tattoos only highlighted her expression.

Shaxx’s hands were on her hips, guiding her as she gently, slowly, fucked Cayde. In a rare show of conviviality, Cayde reached up and laced his fingers with Shaxx’s. Together, they rocked her hips back and forth on his cock and Cayde had to blink spots out of his eyes. He could feel the critical overload building up in his chest, and from behind Squall, he heard Shaxx mumbling.

“Just like that, fuck him like that, you’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen fucking a Hunter Vanguard. You’re so damn beautiful,” Shaxx rumbled into Squall’s neck, pressing his mouth over the marks Cayde had already left there.

Squall shuddered, one of her hands covering the primary vent down his chest, holding it closed. Cayde’s voice clicked, his head snapping back as his hips pistoned up into Squall, who hiccupped in shock before folding forward over Cayde’s body, her body shaking. Her breath caught in her throat, and she mewled Cayde’s name into his neck. She found the wires in his neck, the ones that already bore the marks of her teeth in the coating of the wire, and bit down again.

Flickers of grey glittered at the edge of Cayde’s vision as her mouth sent flames licking across his body, and down, under his plates. His own Light flared at the feeling, rising up in his chest as she worked herself up and down his cock. With her head buried in the crook of his neck, her lips and tongue and teeth working over the wiring and plates, Cayde was left with a – perhaps slightly greyed-out – view of Shaxx leaning down over Squall’s back.

Anticipation burned his chest (or maybe that was Squall’s hands tracing fire across his plates, hard to tell) as Squall wriggled atop him. There was a moment, a breathless moment, as Squall’s mouth bit _hard_ into his plates, Solar-Light pouring out of her mouth, nearly melting the metal between her teeth and Cayde flexed up into her depths, as Shaxx grunted something that sounded utterly enraptured under his breath, that Cayde felt the pressure on his cock slowly, steadily increase.

And then it withdrew, Squall trembling atop him, her hips still working slowly up and down Cayde’s cock. The pressure came back, questing deeper, probing, and Squall moaned, long and low. The pattern continued, Squall fucking Cayde as Shaxx slowly worked her ass open in preparation for what was coming next.

Cayde wanted to pay attention to what Shaxx was doing, but every time he thought he’d have his thoughts together enough to remember to do that, Squall would sink down his cock, or her mouth would send tongues of flame shooting across his neck and shoulder, or she’d whimper his name and honestly, after that, he couldn’t focus on anything. He just wanted more of this, and having to be still for a while to ensure that Squall was not going to be in any amount of pain when the _next_ thing happened.

“Ready?” Shaxx mumbled from behind Squall.

Her response was a nod against Cayde’s shoulder, and a decisive drive _down_ Cayde’s cock that made him choke a little bit on the next few words that were bubbling up in the back of his throat. Shaxx laughed, one of his hands reaching down to cover Cayde’s again, linking their fingers the way Cayde had done earlier. Cayde’s heart gave an appreciative, earnest flip in his chest, and he couldn’t help the grin on his face, or the way his fingers tightened their grip on Shaxx’s.

This was. Just so good.

On top of him, Squall shook, gasping Shaxx’s name into Cayde’s shoulder as Shaxx slowly, deliriously slowly, breached her ass, his cock pressing in, and _in_ , and **_in_**. Squall’s back arched up against Shaxx, away from Cayde. He’d be more upset about that if it didn’t let him look at her in all of her glory. Once Shaxx was fully seated inside Squall, the three of them took a moment to really _savor_ it.

Squall was oppressively _full_ in that moment, so very overwhelmed that she could hardly move from where she had frozen, trying desperately to pull air into her lungs but finding herself incapable of doing so. Her muscles jumped, spasming as pleasure overwhelmed her every fiber. She had not felt this good in a long time, and the overwhelming pleasure was burning her up. Behind her, Shaxx had his eyes screwed shut and his teeth grit against a snarl as he, like Cayde, struggled with the _heat_ and _tightness_ of Squall.

“You…g-kt-ottk-a relax-x-x, darling, you…g-kt-ottk-a, or I’m g-kt-unna lo-lose m-myself, d-d-ar-r-rling, _please_ ,” Cayde stuttered, his hands tightening on her thighs, hard enough to leave more bruises in his wake.

His vision was blitzing out at the edges, and his head jerked to the side as he grit out the only thing he could think to say. He _needed_ her to relax, needed the overwhelming, blinding, tightness around his cock to abate so that he could think or move or do literally anything except sit there and try desperately to breathe.

Squall’s eloquent response was a gasp and a full-body shudder as Shaxx made the first small, short movement into her. Cayde cursed, his own hips snapping harder against Squall’s. She gasped, a high, sweet sound as she bounced between the two of them. Slick gushed from her as she came, and, trembling, Squall collapsed against Cayde’s chest, closing all of Cayde’s vents, leaving him with pressure overwhelming in his chest.

With a huffing laugh from behind Squall, Shaxx reached forward and around, his fingers fanning out, framing Cayde’s cock, adding the pressure of his fingers to the cacophony of pleasure that roared through Cayde. One of his fingers strummed Squall’s clit, and she shuddered again, moaning, insensate, in Cayde’s ear.

She tightened around them both, and then relaxed, as Shaxx made another short thrust.

“U-uhn, _yes_ ,” Squall whimpered as Cayde echoed Shaxx’s thrust with one of his own.

She was still over-full of cock, burning up with Light overwhelming as she was rocked, slowly, and carefully, between two of the most powerful Guardians in the Last City. Sandwiched between them, eyes rolling, hardly capable of anything even approximating coherency, Squall’s face was broken in a orgasmic, euphoric grin. Barely capable of movement on her own, Squall was rocked back and forth by Cayde and Shaxx in turn.

Squall’s moans grew in volume, and Cayde, under her, couldn’t do anything other than slowly, carefully, rock his hips back and forth. Shaxx, behind her, managed deeper, longer thrusts. Cayde could feel Shaxx moving, his cockhead dragging against Cayde’s own through the thin wall of Squall’s body. The sensation was overwhelming, friction without moving, being fucked without moving and Cayde could not parse just how good it felt.

He was trying his damndest to keep his wits about him - he was a Hunter and keeping his wits around him was part and parcel to being a Hunter. He had to focus, he had to keep himself centered and not lose his fucking mind. But Shaxx’s thrusts were long and deep and overwhelming against Cayde’s cock, and into Squall’s ass. She mewled between them, her face still pressed against Cayde’s neck, her body shaking more and more as every moment passed.

She rocked herself weakly back and forth between the two of them, Solar-Light flickering down her skin, igniting small fires across their bodies. The burns were inconsequential, consumed by the Light that roared in their chests. There was too much happening all at once.

There was a pressure in his chest, an unrelenting force that demanded so much out of him that Cayde started to tremble beneath her. He did everything he could to keep himself under control, to not lose control, to remain in command of his own body, to not overload everything in him all at once because it was too soon, it didn’t matter what else had happened that night, he wasn’t going to be outstripped by Shaxx, not when it was Squall that they were focused on, not when he wanted to make sure she couldn’t even think about moving the next day at all.

Right now, she was lying, limp with ecstasy, on his chest. He couldn’t see her face, and while he rather wanted to be able to really and truly watch her, watch her lose her mind, watch her go to pieces - he was about to fall apart himself. He lifted his chin, his back arching as best it could beneath the weight of Squall and Shaxx both, trying desperately to keep his mind in one piece. He could not lose himself just yet but, by the fucking Traveler, it was impossible to hold on.

“G-kt-unna…g-kt-unna _cum_ ,” he moaned, his voice splintering into static.

On top of him, Squall could only muster a reedy wail. Her muscles clenched and she managed to find the strength to prop herself up on her elbows, her chest lifting from Cayde’s. His vents popped open with a sighing hiss and he relaxed only just barely. The pressure in his chest was gone but fuck that didn’t stop the pleasure that was burning him, especially now that he could tilt his chin just a little bit down, mouth hanging open, orange back-lights flashing, and look at her.

Her chest was flushed, a blush running down her chest, her beautiful breasts bouncing as Shaxx kept up his delirious pace behind her. Squall rocked back, trying her best to reciprocate. Her head dropped down, and her muscles tensed as she worked at trying to take more pleasure, more sensation, more of everything.

“ _Yes_ ,” Shaxx hissed from behind Squall, grabbing her hips and guiding the movement she made.

She panted harshly, pushing back against their cocks, her eyes rolling and her lips spreading in a manic grin. This was good. Really good. She was full but she was dealing with it. It was overwhelming, and she was burning up it all. She bit her lip, and tried her damndest to say something but Cayde found some manner of reserve in him to grit his teeth and arch his hips up into her and all that came out of _her_ mouth was a long, low, moan.

Cayde blinked spots out of his eyes. He _adored_ that sound. He wanted to hear nothing but that sound for the rest of his days. Shaxx grunted, sheathing his cock all the way inside of her with one massive stroke. Cayde choked on a curse, his own hips snapping up into Squall, as deep as he could go, bottoming out inside of her with a static-stricken “ _FUCKI_ ” as his release shut down every single one of his over processes.

Squall howled, exploding in a maelstrom of fire. Behind her Shaxx groaned, his head dropping back and his hands reaching up her chest to cup her breasts, tweaking her nipples in a display that Cayde had a hard time believing was for any benefit but his own. Shaxx was a giving sort of guy. Man, but was it ever a beautiful sight to come back to consciousness to. Shaxx’s own eyes were closed and he was grinning in a delirious ecstasy.

She rocked back against their cocks, just once, experimentally. Both Cayde and Shaxx swore loudly, too sensitive for that movement. Squall grinned mischievously, and repeated the movement. Shaxx grabbed her hips, trying to hold her still so that she’d stop doing that. That did not stop her, not even for a moment, her inner walls clenching and relaxing around their cocks even if she could not move enough to rock her hips. Their hands held her still, but with a devious grin, she kept her slow, methodical torture of their cocks inside of her.

Cayde whimpered, incapable of trying to withdraw from Squall, pinned beneath her body and Shaxx on top of her. He wanted relief from this, wanted her to stop so he could come down from this high, but she kept on clenching around his cock, sending pain and pleasure rocketing up his spine. He could not get free, couldn’t find a way to get away, and instead, he was suffering the over-stimulation.

Shaxx’s cock was still trapped as well, adding heavy, insistent pressure against Cayde’s cock. Unlike Cayde, who was whimpering for relief, for Squall to stop, Shaxx was egging her on, desperately keening for her to keep that up, to never stop. Shaxx even managed a few weak thrusts in response, his cock dragging against Squall’s inner walls, and across Cayde’s trapped cock. Cayde choked on a curse, his eyes rolling and head dropping back. His chest heaved and static overwhelmed his vision.

Squall kept her terribly tortuous movements up, slowly regaining control of her hips from Shaxx and going right back to making Cayde really, really wonder at how much an Exo could take before they broke because this was probably torture. Probably. If it didn’t feel so goddamn good, it would be torture. If it was not some of the most divine feelings he had ever experienced, this would be torture. If watching Squall cry out his name as he slowly found it within himself to start thrusting again, despite the pain, because the pain was bleeding back over into pleasure was torture, he could do this again.

She was nearly boneless atop him, joints locked so she would not collapse and could keep mindlessly chasing her own high, even as Shaxx behind her started finding his own pace and Cayde…oh he was just along for the ride.

The sun peeked through her window, slipping beneath the shadow of the Traveler to illuminate the room.

Cayde and Shaxx were both late to the start of their days. The Crucible had never truly started late before, and it never would. Shaxx was the Crucible, as he so commandingly belted out, and it was not late because he was not late. He stood in his position, same as always, and no one dared comment on how he seemed, just ever so slightly, to be hoarse and breathless. Cayde sauntered in to the Vanguard room, definitely not limping or wearing his loosest pants or standing a bit back from the table so as not to press his sore hips up against it.

Ikora and Zavala, already embroiled in their work, with no time to really try and question him, his lateness, or why it looked like some of his plates around his shoulder needed some repairs, just shook their heads and went back to their work. He was sure they’d want to talk to him about it later.

But later was not right now, and right now, he had work to do.


	4. Solar-Burn

It had all been going…so, so well. Cayde would sneak away from work, to Squall’s apartment, where she’d greet him with a delighted grin and tumble with him into bed. Or onto the couch. Against the countertop a couple times, on top of her table once, and quite a few times in her shower. Or, he’d be too tired to go over, tell her as such, and come to his apartment with a Warlock lazily lounging on his couch in pajamas, two takeout bowls of his favorite ramen in front of her. Or she’d be too tired for anything at all except falling asleep curled up next to him as he watched Crucible matches (on mute).

He liked it. The comfort of her soft body against his, her legs twined with his, the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she slept, he liked it a lot. Some nights he didn’t see her, and he was still okay with that because he knew she was still around, just busy, as Guardians tended to be, what with the whole, you know, saving the universe thingy. She’d send him messages when she was out on patrols, or in Strikes. Once, she sent him a link to a video of one of her Annihilations in the Crucible, and he had saved that video because her crackling “ ** _WOOHOO!_** ” of victory made his chest get warm just _remembering_ it.

He couldn’t help the way he smiled thinking about it.

And when work went bad...It went _bad_. He needed the brief flash of happiness of memory as one of the fireteams out in Variks’ Prison of Elders went dark, and he and Ikora both stood, white-knuckled and tense as Zavala patched in Variks to their conversation. The Eliksni’s broken English slipped through the link.

“Kreee-kt, High Honor, hearing from three Guardian-Kells. What is it you seek?” came Variks’ chittering voice, marred with static.

“The fireteam in the Prison right now, what is their status?” Zavala said, gruffly.

Cayde was glad for Zavala’s presence in that moment. He was not the sort to handle this sort of talk well, and Variks and him had never much seen eye to…eyes.

“Ah, yes. Warden tells me one has fled the field, quitting it to preserve their safety. That one is on their way to the Great Machine, and their Kell to report on the failure. Two remain behind, trapped in battle with Skolas. They challenge. They fall.”

Ikora’s mouth drew into a thin line, and a deep quiet fell over the three of them. Abandoning a fireteam was…nearly unheard of. It was a hard thing to conceptualize. Cayde knew that under no circumstance would Ikora or Zavala _abandon_ him. They would always come for him, no matter what. Unless they were dead and never coming back, Cayde knew his friends and fireteam would _come for him_. Whoever it was that left their team-mates behind would face some pretty serious talks.

If they ever found a fireteam that would work with them again, Cayde would be shocked.

“Who remains behind?”

“Two of the sssssh…Hunters, yes? The cloaked ones, seekers of small truths to bring to the Cayde-6. They talk to each other. One is down. One is hiding, cannot reach the other. The Light is going out. I will bring their Little Ghosts to you after Warden-”

“Not necessary, Variks. I will go in. Add me to their team.”

Cayde’s chest _hurt_ at the voice. He recognized it. Ikora did as well. He shot a glance towards her and was happy to see she was not looking at him, but staring straight ahead, her brows furrowing.

“Squall, no. We are not losing another Guardian to this Prison today,” Ikora said, her hands tightening into fists at her side.

A new screen blinked up, courtesy of Lask jumping themselves into the communication line. Squall was standing next to Variks, in simple, casual clothes, nothing near as long or as ostentatious as Warlock Robes generally wore. Her hair was slicked back, the soft glowing lights of the Reef sending fingerlings of lavender highlights lancing across the gloss of the gel. It looked good on her. Fuck, she was even wearing a hint of makeup, golden threads lining her lower waterline, making her silvery eyes glitter. She was clearly not expecting to go into battle today. Whatever reason had pulled her out to the Reef, it was not a battle.

“Variks, open the Prison, I will deal with Skolas and take these little Guardians out,” Squall said, her voice mimicking Variks’ own speaking patterns.

It was hard to read emotion on the Eliksni more often than not – their body language and habits were often impossible to parse into Human, Awoken, or Exo terms. Variks, acclimated as he was to the Queen of the Reef, managed to do an eerily good job of grinning in a way that was easily understood as both vicious and _pleased_.

“You caught Skolas. You brought him to Judgement, to my House. You and I are friends, Guardian-Kell Squall. Killer of Wolves, will you grace my Prison with your battle-mind again?”

The Eliksni’s voice dropped, a manic edge creeping into his tone as he spoke. Squall grinned back at him all of her teeth on display. It was a baring of fangs rather than a smile. Variks slammed the butt of his staff on the ground and crowed, his voice dropping into Eliksni as he sang her exultations.

“Would you have me there?” Squall asked, already knowing the answer.

“Squall you are not cleared to enter the Prison, return to the Tower immediately, this is not sanctioned,” Zavala snapped angrily, leaning in, despite her not being able to see him.

She rolled her eyes and turned away from her Ghost.

“You are not my Vanguard, Zavala,” she said easily, waving a hand over her shoulder, her armor transmatting into place – gloves, boots, bond, and robe. No helmet, not just yet. She was smiling at Variks, beguiling, using the more familiar Eliksni body language to communicate something far beyond her casual dismissal of the Vanguard Titan.

“Squall: You. Are. Not. Cleared. To enter the Prison, return to the Tower _immediately_ ,” Ikora snapped, an uncharacteristic display of aggression leaking out of her. Concern touched her voice, and her knuckles were tight.

Squall’s response to Ikora was a single shrug of her shoulder before she turned back to Variks. That would be _really_ fucking hot, if she wasn’t walking into a goddamn suicide mission that _every_ Vanguard was advising her against – outright forbidding her, in fact. He wanted to revel in her disobedience, that independent streak that in all other things, Cayde thought was just, the best.

But right now…

“Squall. Come on. Don’t do this. My Hunters knew what they were getting into when they went in. Don’t do this, _please_.”

She paused and looked at her Ghost, through the screen, to them. With nothing transmitting back to her except their voices, she couldn’t know she brought her eyes up exactly in position to stare at Cayde. Or she knew the screen well enough to guess at it. He figured it was the latter. Damn her. Stupid clever Warlock.

“Mute them, Lask. Keep the connection open unless they close it. Suppose they should watch this,” Squall said, her eyes not leaving her Ghost’s.

Variks laughed, his vocal chords stumbling over the sound, making it a wheezing, growling affair, but there was no doubt that he found this all _very_ funny.

Ikora just stared at Cayde, mental wheels turning. He had probably overplayed his hand there, but he did not want Squall doing this stupid, stupid thing. Yeah, fine, he would do exactly what she was doing, if he had been in the Reef and heard the conversation that she had heard. But that was the point. He was reckless, stupidly so, annoyingly so, and if he would do something, it was more than likely the wrong choice. It was worse when a Warlock took after him, because they were not nearly as good as getting into and out of fights as Hunters were.

She could die.

And there wouldn’t be anyone who could get to her fast enough to save her.

“Do we have _anyone_ else in the Reef right now?” Ikora hissed, watching as Squall carried on her conversation with Variks.

She was planning for how to enter the Prison – the reset had not yet come, and the path the fireteam before her had taken _should_ be reasonably clear, but she was still alone, trying to go help two stranded Hunters deep, _deep_ , within the Prison. Warlock for Warlock, it was a fair trade, sure.

But one Warlock went in with a team, and Squall was going in alone.

“No, there’s no Guardians fit for an assault on the Reef’s Prison of Elders in the area who could accompany her right now. The Iron Banner has distracted most of the higher-classed Guardians, and challenging the Prison is not for just anyone. If she goes in, she goes alone,” Zavala said. “We can try and get the information out but there is no guarantee anyone will get there in time to offer support to her. She won’t have anyone coming behind her.”

A pit opened in Cayde’s stomach.

“Can’t we send another fireteam out there to support? If Variks is going to let her challenge the Prison, maybe we can get a supplemental team to get out there –“

“Get Keldrin and Yeti-7, that’s the rest of her team. Send them out. Two titans roaring in behind a ‘Lock should be more than enough to handle whatever it was that went tits up in the Prison, right?” Cayde interjected, cutting Ikora off.

Zavala shook his head, checking a list at his side that updated with the current position of his Titans out in the universe around them all. It took him only a moment to pull up the relevant information.

“They’re in the Banner list right now. I can’t get anything to them. Lord Saladin blocks all communication in and out during the competition. No distractions.”

“ _Damn_ ,” Cayde hissed, leaning forward to put both of his palms on the table.

Squall had finished her conversation with Variks, and was walking through the Reef with the Eliksni of House Judgment at her side. He was still crowing her victories in the growling Eliksni language, his voice carrying through the echoing chamber of the Reef. Some Awoken stared at them as they walked by, a Guardian serenely indulging an excited Variks, responding in the language of the Eliksni casually, as if it wasn’t a nearly impossible language for non-Eliksni to speak.

“She’s going in alone, and she’s talking about the sparrow Variks wants her to give him…what is _wrong_ with this Guardian, Ikora?” Zavala groused, shaking his head and looking from Ikora to Cayde.

“No, not wants her to give him, wants as a gesture of friendship. It is a common thing for Eliksni to ask of our Guardians out there. Sparrows, guns, and gestures of friendship like that are commonly traded amongst the Eliksni. They are scavengers, and curiosity about the equipment is normal. Especially if they take a liking to you. They want to know what makes you special – is it equipment or innate?” Cayde said softly, listening carefully to the conversation that Squall was having.

He had never asked Ikora or Squall about what it was that she had known about Eliksni as a people, and a language. Cayde knew Squall was comfortable with the language, and that she had been very comfortable talking to Variks, but he had called her Killer of Wolves, and said she had been involved with bringing Skolas down…but he knew the team that had taken Skolas to the Reef, and Squall hadn’t been there. Right?

Right?

Goddamit, fuck Warlocks.

“Ikora…what involvement with Skolas did Squall have?” he asked quietly, looking across the table to his friend.

Cayde wasn’t stupid. He knew there were things Ikora did not tell either him or Zavala about what her Warlocks got up to, and with what he knew and had seen of Squall, she was without peer. This was obviously not her first trip out to the Reef, that much was certain. Her talking about Skolas, however, that concerned him. He knew the team that had gone out and brought Skolas in, it had been one of his favored Hunters, a Titan and a Warlock that was _not_ Squall who had gone in and handled that.

Not Squall.

Right?

No, it hadn’t been Squall.

“She was instrumental in obtaining information and temporary allegiances with some of the Fallen Houses that wanted to stand against Wolves. She supplied information, drew tight bonds between us as House Judgment that persist to this day. Without her, what eventually lead to Skolas’ defeat would not have come to pass. She is invaluable in matters regarding the Fallen. Beyond that, I cannot say.”

He frowned and looked down at the table. Reports, numbers, everything. None of it mattered right now, because Squall was striding through the first door down into the Prison. Variks’ crows of victory cut out as the door closed behind her.

She sighed, almost softly enough for that to not be picked up by her Ghost, and under her breath, as she fit her helmet over her head – the same one with the crest of feathers, now chased in gold and scarlet – her shoulders rolling forward.

“ _Oh bearer mine, bear me forward, to victory or defeat._ ”

A servo in his chest whined overloud. The Ahamkara refrain, burned into every Guardian’s brain, whether they wanted it or not, spilling out of her mouth as she strode towards suicide. He knew he had to watch. He couldn’t watch, but he had to. He could not look away, but he wanted to. He did not want to watch her die. But still. He would not walk away. He would not look away.

She shrugged a shoulder, trying to loosen up muscles there that got over-tight there. Cayde knew one of her shoulders was bad, an injury that the Traveler had not wiped away at the start of her second life, a weakening of the joint that still nagged at her. Just like his knee bothered him. They helped each other stretch some mornings when they woke up cold and aching. Some things couldn’t be fixed by the Light of the Traveler.

 A shoulder injury was devastating in a fight. So much of the movements of using a gun, bracing it, aiming it, fuck, just even holding it, relied on the shoulders to be healthy and capable of the movements. With an injury, that was no longer certain.

Squall was walking into a suicide mission with an injured shoulder. Cayed wished he could just _be_ there to help her. Yeah, it was a fucking bad move, yeah, this was the probable worst case scenario, but it was Squall and he liked being around her well enough (more than well enough) to want to protect her. He was irritated at his impotence in this moment. It was hard enough to worry about his Hunters – they were both good people, Market-40-11 and Paulie were _good_ Hunters, if not _great_ Hunters. They were _his_ people. Worrying about Squall made a whole ‘nother series of emotions well up in his chest.

“Is there anything we can do?” Ikora asked, softly, looking up at Squall as she walked down the hallway towards the next door.

“No,” Zavala said tiredly.

“Should we turn it off?”

“No. No, we shouldn’t,” Cayde whispered. “We should watch…we should watch her.”

The other two Vanguard Leaders looked at him. Neither of them wanted to question him in the moment, but they had both caught the way Cayde was acting. He was taking an uncommon interest in this, even with his own Hunters on the line. Hunters, Titans, Warlocks, all of them had been killed in the line of duty. All of them had their own ways of mourning what happened when fireteams went dark. Cayde usually got quiet, serious, and somber.

For as much as he could be rambunctious and over the top, he was just as quietly powerful in his sorrow.

Squall came up to Warden, a huge Servitor, bound to Varik’s will. Its huge eye flicked to her, and Variks’ voice came over the speakers.

“Kree-kt, Squall. The first room, cleared. Hive stragglers remain behind. You must be quick. The door will open when the area is clear. Will not have Hive running through the halls.”

Squall nodded. Her autorifle flickered into her hands.

Each Guardian had their own pre-fight checks – soothing things they reached for when battle stared them down, things that quieted their mind and let them relax into the work they were about to do. Cayde liked drumming his fingers against his knife, and then his hand cannon, in that order. Just because. Everyone had their own personal variants on the checks.

Squall’s checks were a quick series of roll-outs through her joints, loosening up, testing the tight spots of her robes, and then, a gentle and delicate touch of her Warlock Bond with her right hand as her left cradled her rifle. With her helmet on, they couldn’t see her face, or any expression she was making, but she took a moment, regardless.

“At your call, Variks.”

The Eliksni elder cackled as the door opened.

Squall crouched down, and the screeching of the Hive filtered through the air. Slowly, carefully, using every ounce of the considerable strength in her thighs, she silently stalked into the room. Cayde couldn’t even pay attention to the flitting thought of how her legs felt wrapped around his waist because the room wasn’t “almost empty” of Hive.

It was absolutely _crawling_ with Thrall.

Getting swarmed was bad enough when you had your team with you. Getting swarmed alone, without anyone to back you up was an entirely different sort of terror.

Ikora stood still, rooted in place, her eyes focused intently on the screen, not moving from her usual stance. The advantage of how she usually stood was that it was if she was stressed or tense, there was hardly any change in her body language. Cayde noticed, though. Cayde always noticed. Ikora was stressed, watching Squall’s advancing through the Prison, her muscles jumping ever so slightly at every tense moment.

And man, were there a lot of tense moments.

Squall was careful, exactingly so, taking her time, moving carefully and without sound, her gun at the ready, just in case everything went sideways on her before she could stop it. Her Ghost hovered just behind her shoulder, its light dimmed to keep the eyes of the Thrall off of her. She was focused, and intent as all hell on not dying. The progress forward was laborious and slow.

She would press her back up against a wall, freezing in place as the Thrall patrolled the area, their hisses drawing no reaction. Consummately professional, she waited for the patrol to pass by before peeling out of the shadows and working her way towards the gravity elevator that would take her to the next level of the Prison.

Variks had warned her that if it was not clear he would not open the elevator, to keep the various sections of the Prison from being overrun. Even if Mara Sov wanted the Guardians to start slowly working their ways through killing ever last one of their trophies, and Variks was more than happy to watch Guardians kill those who had irritated him and his House for so long, they did not want the Prison overrun.

Cabal, Hive, and truly fallen Eliksni all called the Prison home through no choice of their own, worked better when separate. Infighting would have been bad enough, but if they had ever gotten to the point where they could have worked together, it would have been catastrophic for the Reef.

So Squall worked her way through the arena, constantly on alert, and moving as lightly on her feet as she could. Thankfully, the hive made more than enough sound on their own to cover any of her blunders.

She was no Hunter. Silence was not her forte. Moving quickly through a field of enemies, being stealthy, working towards a goal – these were Hunter skills, not Warlock ones. She was doing well, but Cayde found himself biting the back of his knuckles, his tongue pressing up against the leather of his gloves. The taste of gun-oil and ash assaulted his mouth but he could barely bring himself to give a damn.

Just because she was doing the best a Warlock could be expected to do did not mean she was doing particularly well. Squall seemed aware of that, taking extra time to move forward. She was playing conservatively, not moving until she was certain that she was clear. Her head moved as if it were on a swivel, constantly scanning back and forth, relying on Lask to give her updates, which it did, sub-vocally chirping at her, nudging against her shoulder to draw her attention to enemy positions before anything got too close to her.

The three Vanguard watched, in stony, anticipatory silence as Squall finally closed the distance to the gravity elevator.

She stepped into the well, where the activated elevator would start moving her to the next level, looking up expectantly. There were no Hive in the area, none close enough to get to the elevator once it was activated.

Nothing happened.

A moment passed.

Then another.

Cayde bit his knuckles even harder and Ikora’s brows drew down.

“What…is Variks playing at?” Zavala hissed, his glowing eyes brightening in anger.

Softly, but emphatically, they all heard Squall hiss “ _Shit_ ,” to her Ghost.

An ogre dropped into the arena. Squall’s hands dropped, her autorifle brightening into motes of Light before transmatting away. The ogre roared, Squall’s cursing got louder, and all of the Thrall started screeching. She shook her head, did not pull her gun back up and instead, after a quick assessment started climbing upwards. She scrambled at first, trying to get a toehold in the confusingly structured shaft, but then, stunningly, as the ogre began to fire Void-blast shots at her, Squall found her footing and started to climb.

Cayde, Ikora, and Zavala watched, transfixed, as Squall’s robes flickered and changed to something a little looser in the shoulders, and her boots thickened, the treads deepening to give her some extra grip. She climbed, jumping from one side of the shaft to another when the firing got too intense on one side or another.

Futilely, at the bottom of the shaft, Thrall hissed, clawing at the air, trying to get at her Light. She threw a grenade down the shaft at the Thrall and kicked herself out. Her jump-jet kicked in, giving her height and pushing her across the shaft, until she got her hands back in place. Her pattern continued, her grenade a wellspring of Solar energy below her.

She got probably halfway up the entirety of the shaft before the elevator lit up and started lifting her higher and higher. Startled, she looked down and then up. Her autorifle flickered into her hands, and her robes and boots changed back to what they had been.

“Poorly move there Variks. No servitor-parts for you,” she snarled.

“Well, Guardian, you managed. Unexpected, the climbing,” came his mocking, laughing voice over the Prison’s systems as she carefully stepped out the elevator.

“Would’ve been easier if I had four arms. You’d not know anything about that, would you, Variks? Strapping Eliksni like you, with all your – hmm, actually. No. You wouldn’t. Unfortunate.”

Variks did not respond. Her blow had landed, and Variks had taken her point. She was furious with him, and her barbed comment got him right where it hurt. She was going to go handle Skolas, the Eliksni Kell who had torn Variks’ arms off and left him half of the Eliksni he had been and he tried to kill her. She had meant it to hurt.

She had hurt him. The loss of his primary arms at the hands of Skolas had wounded him deeply, leaving scars far, far deeper than the ones that traced up his arms from the old wounds. Squall knew that. She knew he hated his mechanical arms, she knew he hated _any_ Guardian who dared stare too long and got caught doing so, she knew that Variks would take her comment like a punch.

 _Good_.

The hallway she found herself in was long, but uncomplicated by any other enemies. She strode along, quicker now, clearly agitated by what had transpired, but still intent upon where she was going next.

“Head to the left, Guardian-Kell Squall. A different path to Skolas you will take. Shorter. No second fight for you. You will take yourself directly to Skolas now. No more waiting around.”

Squall hesitated for a moment, looking up to the speaker that was transmitting Variks’ voice. He did not say anything else, but after she took a deep breath, she followed Variks’ instructions, against her better thoughts. She was tense, holding herself tightly as she followed the instructions of a Eliksni advisor that she was only mostly certain could be trusted.

“Good, good. Now right, Guardian-Kell.”

She followed instruction, not saying anything any longer, just listening to Variks. The mood between them had shifted. Mercurial was a simple way to describe the Eliksni. Their culture was one based off of scavenging and heroism, and needling and forcing warriors through their own sort of Crucible. Guardians, Light-stealers, those who took what the Eliksni thought was properly and rightfully theirs got the worst of it.

The double-edged sword of their relationship was something she was not unfamiliar with, but…right after nearly being killed in a trial that was foisted upon her, she was less keen on the idea. Variks wanted nothing more than to understand her, and what she did, and how. She knew that. But trusting him was hard more often than not. Especially when the mission was already so dangerous. If it had been her and a fireteam, it could have been something of a joke.

On her own, though? No. It had been a murder attempt.

She shook her head. Partially to dismiss the thoughts, partially to loosen up her neck, but realistically, it was all for just something to _do_ as she walked down the hallway of the Prison of Elders.

Variks guided her past door after door, and she knew better than to ask after who was stored behind these doors. Enemies of the Reef and it’s Queen populated the frozen chambers, and now that Mara Sov had given the order for the Prison to be slowly emptied by virtue of wholesale slaughter, there were doors that lead nowhere but cairns. She had no interest in knowing, anyway. The Prison was not her interest. She only ever entered it to further her bonds with Variks – she treated it as seriously as she treated any Strike, or Patrol in the Darkness Zones. Death was a possibility in the Prison. Squall rather did not want to die.

“This door. This is one that leads to Skolas. The battle rages beyond it. Will you succeed, Guardian-Kell?”

“I damn well hope so, Variks. Open the door.”

He laughed, and _laughed_. For an overlong moment, all the sound that came through their connection was Variks’ near-hysterics. Squall stood still, waiting for Variks to get over whatever joke it was that he saw in the situation. She did her best to not fidget, and to present a form of absolute stoicism in the face of danger. She was a Guardian. They were fighters. Forever.

The door in front of her opened with a horrible screeching sound. She flinched, turning her head away from the noise. Unfortunately, that drew the attention of all the Eliksni in the room. Her Ghost chirped, linking her to the fireteam already in there. She had only the moment it took for her Ghost to link with the others, the highlighting of the other Guardian and the downed Ghost, before she was under fire.

Without a second thought, she dove to the left, tucking and rolling. She popped up to her feet, and ran. Tracer bullets followed her around as she ducked into the cover provided by the hallway and ran towards the Guardian that was still up.

“New Guardian – what the _fuck?!_ ” crackled a voice over the com-link.

“Run, run, run run!” Squall shouted, grabbing them by the shoulder, turning them around and pushing them forward.

They didn’t need a second encouragement, they turned and ran like fuck. Squall was right on their tail, ducking down to try and keep from getting hit as much as the Hunter was trying to avoid it as well. The two of them ran around the edge of the arena, trying to put distance between them and Skolas.

Squall ran and shot at the same time, taking potshots at dregs and vandals, trying to thin the numbers they were facing down. In the background, Skolas laughed at the two of them. He rumbled snarling Eliksni at them, mocking their ineptitude, calling them to come tend to their fallen comrade before Skolas sent a sniper after their Ghost to end them permanently. The threat was not a hollow one. There was a danger there.

Hissing under her breath, she ran, driving towards the downed Ghost, the Hunter with her now taking up a more aggressive firing pattern. The hope was that they would get enough of the Eliksni out of the way to get to the downed Guardian, get them up, and then mount a proper counter-attack. Unfortunately, Skolas had other plans.

He teleported into the space in front of them.

The Hunter dove backwards, somehow managing to convert all of their forward momentum into backward momentum all at once. It was a really stunning display of flexibility and quick-thinking. Squall was a little less graceful, dropping into a side-slide to slow down, and as soon as she was close enough to stopping, she turned and started running the other way. Her low form saved her from the arcing shot from a tracer shank in the back of the room, but the Hunter gasped, and staggered, grabbing at a new hole in their armor that the Light sparked at, incapable of healing right then.

They tried to run back the way they had come. There could be another way to get to the downed Guardian. Reassessing the situation from somewhere with _cover_ was more important in that moment than pushing and over-extending. If they both died, then there was no way to save the third. They had to stay alive. The two of them needed to stay up. Stay alive. Keep moving.

There was no wall at the back end of the arena, just a drastic, terrifying drop out into the expanse of the Reef. It was a bad position to be in, but there was no option for them. They had to get to the downed Guardian. They had to stay up themselves.

Skolas slammed his foot down, a wave of arc energy flashing out from him, knocking vandal, dreg, and Guardian alike to the side.

The Hunter grunted, their body not capable of taking the last little bit extra of damage. Their Ghost blinked up, catching their dying body in its shell. Squall reached out, grabbing the Ghost with her free hand before she tumbled over the open gap in the wall, out of sight, and out of the line of fire.

Lask trailed behind her, skimming the ground before slipping over the edge, just in time for the gathered Vanguard leaders to watch a Warlock in freefall Blink to the side, underneath the shelf formed by the Prison.

Squall reached out, grabbing a dangling pipe and nearly wrenching her arm out of its socket when her weight hit her arm. She shouted, her head snapping back. The Hunter’s Ghost was cradled in her other arm. Hissing and panting, trying to hold on, Squall slowly pulled herself up, kicking one of her legs up over the pipe and slowly getting herself into position where she was a little more stable.

The sigh that spilled out of Cayde’s mouth broke the silence in the Vanguard room. The relief that flooded him was fucking palpable. She could stay there, they’d send a jump ship to her, pick her and the one Hunter up, and they could mourn the one left behind. But at the goddamn least two of them would survive. It would be okay.

It was going to be okay. They would mourn, it would hurt, but _fuck_ , at least it would be better than expected.

Overhead, Skolas laughed, and his big thumping footfalls began to slowly stalk towards the downed Ghost. Squall struggled to get her balance on the lone pipe, gasping for air, bleeding from a few dozen bullet holes, the Light of the Traveler flickering at the edges of her armor, slowly sealing the holes in body and armor alike.

The Hunter’s Ghost in her arms brightened and then, surprisingly, even for Squall, formed back into the Guardian. A tangle of limbs, another hissed curse, and Squall and the Hunter were staring, faceplate to faceplate. There was a bit of re-positioning as the two of them tried to get situated on the surprisingly sturdy piece of pipe. They sat, side by side, staring at each other as the battle above them hit a lull.

An uncomfortably long silence stretched between the two of them, each regarding the other, their armor, and weapons. Taking stock of the person they were face to face with, the way Guardians who met in the field did. The shaders, the equipment, even the weapons, all of it got a quick, but judgmental look over. Pass or fail, the two Guardians only had each other in that moment so it was moot.

“Hey. I’m S-q-u-a-l-l : Squall. Think you could throw my Ghost at S-k-o-l-a-s: Skolas and get your friend up if I was a distraction?” she signed, using the more formalized Guardian-sign language everyone used for exactly these sorts of situations.

The sign she used for her name was the same as the one for “Storm” but signed lower, closer to her abdomen. The one she gave Skolas was “Wolf” and “King” signed at the same time, with her non-dominant hand signing “King” across her chest.

“P-a-u-l-i-e : Paulie. I’ve got a good throwing arm, but what’s the actual plan?“

Paulie’s name-sign was a modified “panic”, with her fingers held, both signing “P”, and then both brought in towards the center of her chest.

Squall shrugged.

“Not much of one right now. Figure I shoot myself in the face, you throw the Ghost at Skolas, I do some sparking flame-y boom boom shit, get everyone to look at me, you get your partner up, and then we get out of this mess.”

Paulie huffed.

“That’s not a great plan.”

“Got something better?”

Paulie threw her hands up in the air, helplessly gesturing to the mess of Eliksni overhead. Squall shrugged. There was not much else to do. The two of them were not built out for siege warfare.

“Nope. We’ll do that.”

They nodded in agreement. Squall transmatted a handcannon into the place of her auto-rifle.

“They can’t be serious. They cannot be doing this. This is just…this is _madness_ ,” Zavala whispered.

Ikora had nothing to add, nodding only once to acknowledge what Zavala said. She just watched, stony-faced and silent as Squall prepared herself, pulling her robe open at the neck, her helmet vanishing, opening an easy path for a bullet to kill her and put her in the Ghost so she could be thrown like a grenade, at Skolas’ stupid face.

Watching carefully, the three Vanguard leaders waited, breathless, for the plan to be executed. Three Guardians were either about to make a bid for victory, or there would be three dead Ghosts for Variks to send to the Tower when this was over. Cayde watched, his heart pounding against his metal ribs, as Squall comfortably, _easily_ , nestled her hand cannon up underneath her chin, nodding at Paulie and then gesturing towards the lip of the overhang.

“Need a hand?”

Paulie nodded, gesturing for Lask to come over to her. Lask nestled up under the Hunter’s hand, quietly acquiescing to the plan. Her fingers covered Lask’s view, obstructing the video. Squall offered a hand to Paulie, who shook it, and then gripped it tightly. With a sharp, short breath, a stabilizing tensing of her shoulder, Squall nodded once more, and then, in a breathless single movement, the two of them dropped down, Squall’s legs still looped around the pipe they had been sitting on. Their jump-jets kicked in simultaneously to give Paulie as much _up_ as possible.

The Hunter flew into the air, a handcannon shot rang out, Paulie threw Lask at Skolas, and the Vanguard Leaders watched, breathless and concerned, as the Ghost flew towards the massive Captain.

And then, in a rush of flame, Squall exploded out of Lask.

“ _SKOLAS,_ ” she shouted, flames shooting out from her body in mimicry of the Phoenix of the Crucible. “ _FACE ME._ ”

The arena around her was illuminated in shimmering Solar-Light and she stood, tall and proud and resplendent, in midair, flaming wings bursting from her back. The Solar-Light that poured from her sent sheets of fire roaring down, immolating the Eliksni who could only stare up at her in fear and awe.

“ ** _YOU_** ,” Skolas howled back, recognizing her all at once. He knew that Guardian. Her haunting at the edge of his House, the words from other Houses who reported to him, how she had worked alongside Variks, how she had done so much work against him and his House and now she was _here_.

Skolas. Knew. Her.

Squall cackled, throwing pillars of fire and chaos down around her. She was the focus of all the Eliksni in the arena, grenades and fire and flame-fists raining down with impugnity around her. Her voice ripped out of her chest, nothing coherent, not anymore, she was enraptured with the _burning_ in her chest. There was chaos and screaming and the snap of ether tanks exploding, and through it all, she faced down Skolas, daring him to do anything but focus on _her_.

Soothing fire wrapped around Paulie, who had made it to Market 40-11’s Ghost. The flames shielded the odd bullet that made it to them before any damage could be done. Squall’s screaming faded into the background as Paulie desperately tried to bring Market 40-11 back up. Nothing worked. Market’s Ghost was silent, no matter what Paulie did. Frantic, panicking, losing semblance of propriety as the realization of _Death_ sunk in, Paulie scooped the Ghost into her arms and bolted for cover.

In the background, Squall’s mad laughter grew to a fever pitch as the Solar Light overwhelmed her and drove all sense of propriety out of her. She wanted to fight, she wanted the brawl, she wanted to destroy Skolas because he _deserved_ it. Her screeching rose to a fever pitch as she felt the last of the Solar-Light bleed from her. She touched down on the scorched earth, her autorifle coming back up into her hands as she continued hounding Skolas, leading him away from Paulie and Market 40-11’s Ghost.

Squall did not know what was taking them so long to get up, but it didn’t matter. Skolas was focused on her and she, on him. Her sniper rifle came up and she took shot after shot at his stupid, fat, Eliksni head, aiming for the ports that fed him ether, trying to cut down his supplies, trying to hurt him as much as she could.

Paulie was trying, desperately, to get Market 40-11 up, but no matter how she put her hand to the Ghost and let the Light of the Traveler that was a part of her flow into Market 40-11’s Ghost, Market did not wake up. Squall did everything she could to keep Skolas’ attention on her, but it was only so effective. Skolas, eventually, turned back to Paulie and Market 40-11, laughing to himself. He was hurt, critically so, but so were the Guardians. He could hurt them. He could kill them.

Shouting frantically, Squall tried to get Skolas to look back at her instead of paying attention to the other Guardians. She jumped in the air, drawing all of the fire from the vandals and dregs around the arena, uncaring of the damage it was doing to her. The Hunters needed space. The second of them was not up yet, and that was concerning.

Her autorifle tore through the gathered Eliksni, screams and bursting ether tanks heralding her advance on Skolas. Skolas laughed, stomping closer and closer to the now-frantic Paulie and the dimming Ghost of Market 40-11. Paulie scrambled back and away, trying to pull Market 40-11’s Ghost along with her, ineffectively trying to get to cover and protect Market 40-11’s last line of life, hiding Market’s Ghost in her cloak.

Squall screamed, pulling a grenade out of the air, throwing it at Skolas’ face, catching him in the side of his mask, destroying one of the ether pipes there. Skolas’ head jerked to the side, his glowing eyes fixating on Squall once again.

“ _COME AT ME YOU CRAVEN FOOL_ ,” she howled in Eliksni, beating a hand against her chest.

A House Judgment Banner flickered into place on her hips, where a Titan’s mark would be had she been reborn a Titan instead of a Warlock. Skolas roared, turning away from the embattled Guardian and the lone Ghost, enraged at the sight of Judgement’s Crest in his arena, a mocking reminder of what it was that had brought him so damn low in the first place.

Skolas gave chase, rage overwriting sense, and Squall ran through the arena. No tactics, no nothing. Just fury, just _rage_. She darted through the ruins of Skolas’ ketch, hiding behind and inside of the husk. Skolas’ scorch cannon ripped through the metal, dropping slag down Squall’s back and shoulders. She hissed, and then screamed as a huge bubble of slag burst across her back. Staggered, she stumbled out of cover, clutching at her back. Skolas cackled, and aimed his scorch cannon directly at her.

She stared up at him, snarling in hopeless, fruitless defiance. Over her shoulder, Lask peered up, blinking its lone blue eye at Skolas. If death was coming, they would face it together. Partners for life. Unlife. Death. Forever.

Her shoulders squared to Skolas, and he savored the moment. The Eliksni Kell had a hated Guardian in front of him, at the front of his scorch cannon. There was nothing else, no one else. Just him.

Lask chirped, and in Squall’s HUD, she saw the terrible, horrible, heart-stopping message:

* * *

LAST GUARDIAN STANDING

* * *

“ _Shit_ ,” she hissed, moving to block Lask from direct fire. Hope against hope, her Ghost would survive.

Sotto voce, barely loud enough for her helmet’s mic to pick up, Squall said what she was pretty certain was about to be her last words: “Coming back home to you, arms open, eyes skyward, eyes shut.”

She exhaled, low and slow, and looked up, and up, and up to Skolas’ face. She did not cower. She did not flinch. She did nothing but stare Skolas down. Waiting. In slow motion, she watched as Skolas’ clawed hand tightened on the trigger. Her heart beat hard against her ribs.

Fire bloomed in front of her, and then, before the impact, before the pain, before the rush of heat not-her-own, a wall of Void energy flashed down in front of her.

“NOT. TODAY,” crowed Yeti-7 from behind Squall, bringing up his massive rocket launcher over Squall’s shoulder and unloading a shot directly into Skolas’ gut, staggering the Kell.  

The relief that flushed through Squall ripped a groan out of her chest. She dropped to a knee, clutching at Lask in relief. She only took a moment, and then she was back on her feet, her rifle in hand. From where Paulie and Market 40-11 had been down, another Ward of Dawn boomed down. Keldrin had them safe. The warning alert faded, and bolstered by _her_ Fireteam, Squall stood.

“On call?” Keldrin hissed over the mic, his voice mildly distorted through the two Wards of Dawn.

“Yep, on me,” Squall responded.

This was a familiar beat and rhythm to their battles. Keldrin, Yeti-7, and Squall had worked together for decades at this point. They knew how each other moved. Yeti-7 hoisted his rocket launcher high, firing with impunity at Skolas, as Squall dove to the side and began to create distance. The Ward of Dawn was something to contend with for Skolas, blinding him when he dared to step into it.

Howling, Skolas stepped back, clawing at his eyes. Squall strafed to the side, in between Keldrin’s Ward and Skolas. A spray of bullets lanced up Skolas’ leg, distracting him, dragging his attention back to her.

Hurt, angry, and angry all over again that this Guardian would not take the hint and just fucking _die_ already, Skolas put all of his attention back on Squall. Beside him, Yeti darted away, pulling for distance, trying to back away to support Squall. If Skolas got too close to her, Yeti would open fire, pulling away, dragging Skolas’ scorch cannon back from targeting Squall. It was a beautiful give-and-take between them, as Keldrin worked with Paulie and Market 40-11to keep them safe and out of the line of fire.

“Market’s Ghost isn’t getting up. Something’s wrong. The two of you have to take this, I’ll hold with Paulie,” Keldrin said, his voice clearer now that the Wards were down.

“Copy. Yeti, go for the knees, I need to get height. Servitor coming in, take them down, then focus down Skolas.”

A grunt came as the only response from Yeti. Squall scrambled, her jump jet and natural agility helping her clamber to a point about on par with Skolas’ shoulder-height. Yeti hounded Skolas, swapping easily between his scout rifle and fusion rifle when he could, keeping the Kell on guard. For a Titan, Yeti was surprisingly agile, his frame narrower through the shoulder and hip, and his love for ostentatious shoulder pads was not so far that he would do anything to obstruct his mobility.

Squall, hidden from Skolas and watching intently, knew that there would be a good time to strike. Keldrin, in the back, took the occasional opportunity shot at Skolas, Paulie following suit. The errant shots were enough to keep Skolas from being able to focus down Yeti, who used that to his advantage, alternating letting Skolas look away for as long as it took for the sparking holes in his armor to mend, and rushing back in to take the attention once again.

They worked well together. Familiarity with each other’s movements made the fireteam a fright to behold.

“I’m up, get ready for some goddamned fireworks,” Squall said.

Yeti pushed forward on Skolas, pulling all of his ire and fire for just as long as it took for Squall to leap from her perch, towards Skolas’ head and explode in a maelstrom of fire once again.

This time, Skolas had no time to react, barely managing to catch the movement of Squall out of one of his uninjured minor eyes before the world in front of him was flame and fury. Squall reached out, wrapping burning hands around the ether tube that fed him, even in battle, and as the world around her burned like Sol, she tore it apart.

Ether, it turns out, is _exceptionally_ flammable.

Skolas’ head exploded and he screamed, clutching at his broken mask. His exhalations breathed more fire into the air, the ether in his lungs burning up. Squall grabbed onto one of the remaining tanks, her hand melting the tank, and more ether exploded out of the tank, scorching the air around her. She did not scream, she did not howl her exultations, she was only, painfully, focused on her victory. The fire around her burned brighter, and brighter, and _brighter_ as Squall’s Light overflowed and dominated the world.

The Kell screamed, reaching up to wrap a massive hand around Squall’s burning body. He did not care about the pain. He wanted to crush her stupid ribcage in his hands before he died. If he could hurt her just one more time he could die victorious.

He died in utter, utter defeat.

Squall tore his mask off and open, wreathing herself in the white-gold fire of burning ether. Skolas died in a burst of ether, a roar of vainglorious denial echoing through the arena. Squall did not crow in his death, just rode his collapsing body down to the ground. Her flames slowly guttered out, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He was dead.

“Kr-eeee-kt, The Kell of Kells….is…dead. Long live…the Kell of Kells.”

“Don’t mock, Variks, get the doors open. We need extraction posthaste.”

Variks did not respond to her statement but the doors opened immediately. The Eliksni that remained drew away from Squall, averting their gaze, making them easy prey for Yeti and Keldrin, who swept the area as Squall took a moment to catch her breath and begin looking over the fallen Kell for anything to scavenge back.

Or at least, she was doing that until she heard Paulie scream:

“ _NO, BY THE LIGHT, **NO**!_ ”

She looked up from Skolas’ body, to Paulie, Keldrin, and Market 40-11’s Ghost. She gestured to Lask, and the transmitting video cut out.

Ikora cursed under her breath as the screen vanished. There was silence around the Vanguard table. Cayde released a shaking breath he did not realize he had been holding. One Hunter was dead. That was the only outcome. He would have to make the announcement once the Ghost had been brought back and it was confirmed that the Light had gone out. It was a sad day, but it was _one_ Ghost and not _three_.

The victory was still hollow.

“How did Keldrin and Yeti-7 get there so fast, you said they were in the Banner list,” Ikora whispered, looking to Zavala, wanting an answer for his Titan’s actions.

“…I don’t have an answer for you,” Zavala said, concern creeping into his voice.

There was silence at their table for a long moment. Zavala broke the silence, clearing his throat and restarting the meeting that had been interrupted by their reaching out to Variks about what was happening to the dark Fireteam. That had been bad enough but it felt like…ages ago.

Cayde was sad, painfully and horribly so. Losing any Guardian was bad, but he felt responsible for every Hunter that went out and did not come back. They were _his_ Hunters, _his_ people and if he had just been able to go out into the field he could _do something_ about it –

“ –t, d’you -py?” crackled a voice over Zavala’s Ghost.

“It’s Keldrin, Zavala, he’s jumping the line in, Protocol Furies,” the Ghost whispered, just loud enough for the gathered Vanguard to hear.

Zavala did not often blanch, but at that, he _nearly_ flinched. Both Cayde and Ikora shared a glance between them. Zavala was startled and off-guard. That was…not good.

“Titan, repeat. Did not catch.”

“ –ker, we ne- -he Spea- _-!_ Squa- -wn, un—pons-ve. Advise!”

The static kept breaking up, but Keldrin sounded frantic, out of breath. In the background, breaking in with Keldrin’s voice, a blaring klaxon that made it even harder to understand what broke through. Something was wrong. Again.

When it rained, it poured.

“Repeat, did not catch.”

“ _GET THE SPEAKER,_ ” shouted Yeti-7, his mechanical voice transmitting crystal-clear.

And then the connection cut out in a hiss of cursing.

The three Vanguard stood around their table, watching and waiting. The meetings and everything else they had to do loomed over them, but it seemed as if, for now, no one wanted to step back into doing their other work. It would wait.

It would wait, regardless.

They knew the time it took for a jump ship to get from the Reef back to the Tower, and while it would not be _that_ long for them to wait, today was not going well. There was a tension in the air. Cayde felt it doubly so. Nervous about his Hunters who had died, and now…nervous for what had happened after the fact. Clearly something happened. Something bad. Whatever it was, was bad enough that a Titan used some manner of code phrase or _something_ to open a line immediately to the Vanguard without being invited in appropriately.

“Contact the Speaker, get him ready for whatever it is that will be coming in – they would not use that call sign-in if it was not critical. Whatever has happened, it is something they feel unequipped to handle. Clear the room.”

Zavala recovered quickly, returning to his normal tone and cadence as if he was not caught off-guard. His friends and fireteam-mates knew him better than to think that he was not affected by whatever happened, but he was projecting calm. Zavala could not let those around them think that there was something beyond his control. People looked to the Vanguard to be able to solve any problem, stop any threat. Even the ones individual Guardians got into on their own.

Ikora handled sending the message to the Speaker, uncertain if this was necessary. Squall was usually pretty handy at dealing with anything that would require an understanding of the Light and the Traveler, but she did not respond to any of the messages Ikora sent. What concerned Ikora most was that after the first message, all of the subsequent messages from her Ghost to Squall’s bounced back.

It was going to be only a few more minutes before the Guardians would be back in range of Tower communications. Ikora already had her hand hovering over the communications link, waiting to see the blip for any of the Guardians’ jumpships appearing on the radar. Three ships dropped in at the same time, with a fourth shortly behind them.

A hail to the lead ship received no response. No ships responded to the call. Three peeled off to the hangar, and the lead ship careened towards the Tower itself.

“Keldrin and Squall are dropping in, the rest of us are coming from the Hangar as fast as we can,” Yeti’s voice snapped over the line.

 “Wh-“ Cayde started, looking up and to the side, where the massive Tower window was, just in time to see a scarlet and gold jumpship scream past.

Two bodies transmatted in.

Keldrin, the Awoken Titan, was supporting a nearly completely limp Squall, one of her arms slung over his shoulders, the other cradled up against her chest and tied in place with strips from Keldrin’s Mark. Blood – actual honest to the Traveler _blood_ – stained her chest, dripping down to the floor, leaving bloodied drag marks as Keldrin struggled to keep her up after the transmit dropped them in.

Her head lolled, her eyes were unfocused, half-closed, and she was slumped over. Burns marred the skin around her eyes and blood dripped, slowly, from her nose.

Lask blinked up at Cayde, tucked into the collar of Squall’s robes, safe, if a little dinged up around the shell. The relief that flooded through him at the sight of the living Ghost, the proof that Squall was okay, that no matter what she had done and what horrid comeuppance Ikora was going to push upon her, Squall was _okay_ , nearly had Cayde collapsing against the table.

And then he did, a hiss of shock coming out of his mouth, and Ikora’s at the same time.

 Connecting the second Ghost clutched against her chest and the horrible wound in her sternum was a pulsing strand of Light. The relief turned to terror in Cayde’s chest as he understood what it was that put her in that state. A Guardian had _one_ Ghost, not two, and the brief moments of connection that allowed one Guardian to resurrect another was as far as that ever went. Light poured out of the wound in Squall’s chest, beating in time with her heart.

Market 40-11’s Ghost blinked as well, its shell broken in two and the glowing eye at the center cracked down the middle. But it was still active, weakly half-spinning its shell in greeting. Market 40-11 was _alive._ Down but alive. Against every thin shred of possibility, Market 40-11 was alive.

“Market went down, and a Vandal shot their Ghost. Squall said she could keep him stabilized. She…she did _something_ and there was a flash of Light and we haven’t been able to get her or Lask to respond since.”

Ikora rushed up, reaching out to help support Squall, her hand grabbing Squall’s shoulder. Keldrin did not let go of Squall, looking between Ikora and Zavala, his brows furrowed.

“Where’s the Speaker? He has to know what happened. How to do this. Undo this? Whatever. _Help her!_ ”

“Get her sat down, here, here, lay her down,” Ikora said quickly, gesturing towards the window. There was a small couch there, really meant for decoration more than actual use, but Keldrin moved immediately, dipping Squall down onto it as gently as he could.

Blood continued to leak from the wound in Squall’s chest, and she gave a rattling cough as the angle of her head sent blood down the back of her throat. Ikora pulled Squall onto her side, turning her head to clear Squall’s throat for her. Squall’s chest heaved and she spat blood across the floor with a broken groan. She mumbled something in Eliksni, slurred too far for Cayde to parse.

Market 40-11’s Ghost moved slowly, flickering like it wanted to fly, but then slowly, beleaguered, fell back down, nuzzling back down against Squall’s chest. Market 40-11’s Ghost was covered in Squall’s blood, and the line of Light that linked it back to Squall bubbled and spat, dripping the condensed Light onto her chest. Where the Light hit, her armor smoked and burned. But her Light glowed out of a mending crack in the linked-up Ghost, slowly healing whatever it was that had been done to it.

Ikora knelt down next to Squall, questioningly pressing her hands against Squall’s wounds, feeling out the depth and severity of them. Squall did not react more limply moving with Ikora’s prodding. Her breath caught in her throat and it sounded _pained_.

“Squall…” Ikora asked, reaching up to push Squall’s hair out of her eyes.

No reaction. Her eyes rolled and there was a frisson of tension up her spine that melted out of her just as fast. A long exhale, pained, and wheezing spilled out of her mouth. More blood, and at her neck, Lask tried to speak, but all that came out was a shower of sparks and static. Lask shook, and collapsed against Squall’s body, tucking themselves up under Squall’s chin.

Keldrin knelt down as well, worriedly looking between Ikora and Squall. He knew when he was out of his depth, and Warlocks tended to only play in the deep end.

“What did she do, what were her actions that lead to this?” Ikora asked, softly, but her voice still biting and intense.

Ikora carefully tested the depth of Squall’s wounds, feeling out the tears in Squall’s armor and how severe the wounds were.

Keldrin took a deep breath, looking up to his own Ghost for a moment.

“After Skolas was defeated, Paulie informed us that Market’s Ghost had been damaged during the fight and that Market could not be resurrected. The damage to the Ghost was enough that a link to the Light was not enough to heal and Paulie believed this meant that Market was gone. Squall pulled her robes opened, quoted a line –“

“ ‘ _An’ ye who are dead may know one truth’_ – it is part of one of the Dirge-Cantos of The Warlock-Scholar Yrael-Optif,” supplied Keldrin’s Ghost.

Ikora sighed. She knew the words.

“Yes, and then she asked Market’s Ghost to open its shell as far as it could, carefully turned the tines of the shell towards her chest, and…I don’t know. Her hands started glowing like she was going to take a grenade, but she didn’t. She took Market’s Ghost in hand, and with the Light around her, pushed the Ghost into her skin,” Keldrin winced as he said it, looking away from Squall. The memory was clearly uncomfortable and raw.

Cayde felt an uncommon sense of…anger starting up in him. He didn’t know where it was coming from, or why he was feeling it, but there was _something_ in this that was starting to really nag at the part of him that was consumed by fire. He did not get **angry** often, but he felt it now, burning up in him as Keldrin talked.

“The fins of the shell bit in, there was a flash of Light, she went limp, but the critical damage to Market’s Ghost was gone. Mostly gone. Not gone enough to rez Market, and now Squall won’t…now she’s like this. We got her out of the Prison, Variks checked the wounds to make sure they were not critical, and then we came here as fast as we could.”

Zavala had his Ghost recording, standing back, and watching the doors. The room had been cleared at his command, leaving only the Vanguard Operations leaders there. Shaxx stood outside the door, calling a momentary halt to the Crucible as, when the Vanguard room was emptied, it was generally assumed to be a critical mission debrief. He may be needed.

With the Iron Banner on, it was not as if there were terribly many Crucible matches happening and he could use the break.

Ikora pressed her fingers to the side of Squall’s neck not protecting Lask. The pulse there was strong, and slow. Blood still dripped from Squall’s nose and when Ikora pressed her thumb to the space just to the side of Squall’s nose, Squall choked and tried to pull her head back. The movement was weak, and Ikora managed to keep her fingers in place easily. Squall shuddered, but did not react further.

“The Speaker has been notified. He’s on his way as fast as he can manage,” Zavala said.

Ikora nodded, still checking Squall over. She was remaining calm. As calm as she could manage to be, looking at one of her Warlocks who had done something incredible and wondering what it was that this was going to end up meaning for the Guardians as a whole. If this sort of thing – if tethering a Ghost to another Guardian’s Light – was enough to keep downed Ghosts and Guardians alive in miserable, out-manned situations, that could change a lot of how they went after downed fireteams.

But first, she had to know that the Warlock who first tried this madcap stupid idea actually remained standing in the aftermath.

The Speaker swept into the room from one of the locked side-doors. Only Vanguard operatives of high enough level had the code to that door, and the Speaker, obviously, had the codes to just about any door in the Tower he wanted access too.

It was hard to read his emotion through the mask, but when he saw Squall, it was obvious he was disturbed. Guardians did not _bleed_ overmuch. Awoken and Human Guardians had blood in them, and if you stabbed them, you’d get some blood, but the Light of the Traveler usually acted so fast that any blood was stopped and sealed up within a  moment in combat, and nigh instantaneously outside of it.

Seeing a Guardian in the _process_ of bleeding was uncommon. Scary.

He knelt at Squall’s head, his hands ghosting over the same places on Squall’s face and neck that Ikora had touched. Light flickered at his fingertips, reaching up from Squall’s body to his in recognition. She stirred, briefly, her eyes opening.

Standing as far back as he was, Cayde could not see the intricacies of what happened, but Solar-Light burned in her eyes, golden light overwhelming the silver of her irises. Her cry was soft, pained, and she pulled away from the Speaker’s touch, coughing blood again.

Now, he wasn’t a medic by any stretch of the means, and it had been a long, long while since he had been an organic – but coughing up blood was _never_ a good sign. Squall was hurt and something was wrong with her Light that it was not _fixed_ yet. She should be fine, if the Light was with her, whatever had happened should have already cleared up, should have already been made whole again.

This was not…good.

“Squall, focus, I need you to focus for me,” the Speaker said, gently.

She mumbled something, her tongue heavy in her mouth, the words all coming out slurred together. The Speaker took a deep breath and looked between Keldrin and Ikora, carefully taking stock of the situation before leaning back in towards Squall. He reached out, gathering Market 40-11’s Ghost into his hands, and twining the strand of Light through his fingers. A knife appeared in his other hand, pressing up against the point where the Light poured out of her chest, the flat of the blade against her robes while the edge threatened the Light.

“She’s melded her Light with Market 40-11’s. A dangerous gambit, as a single body cannot bear the Light of two Guardians. I understand the situation was dire, but she should be cautioned against doing this again. Their Lights are twined together. Market will be okay, but I am less sure about Squall. Her Light is supplying the bridge. The ‘snap’ back may harm her. We shall see.”

The Speaker was a Warlock without peer – even Osiris himself could not match the Speaker in knowledge or skill. His words were soothing, and his confidence allayed Keldrin’s fears on the matter immediately.

“So she’ll be alright?”

“Mm, it remains to be seen, but she should be. I understand what she has done, the Light in her is plain about what it was that had happened. We may have to have a talk, you and I, Ikora, about this young Warlock after she recovers.”

Ikora nodded, looking back down to Squall, her jaw clenched. There was much at play, and Squall was so much more than what she appeared to be, broken and bleeding on the couch. But the Speaker did not ask questions that people could refuse.

“Of course, Speaker.”

The Speaker looked up to Ikora, communicating his seriousness with a simple, long stare. Slowly, he turned back to Squall, pressing the knife up against the Light once again.

“We need her to wake up enough for her Light to start to pull from Market 40-11’s, at which point I will sever the bond. The Ghost of Market 40-11 will have some time before he will be ready to come to, but I am more concerned about Squall. She will have some issue, I assume.”

Cayde wanted Ikora to ask more questions, wanted Ikora to question the Speaker relentlessly until _he_ understood just what it was that was happening. But she did not. And he did not want to ask any questions that would distract the Speaker when there was a knife so close to Squall’s still-bleeding chest. The Warlocks understood what was happening, which just meant that the Hunter was sitting there, burning up with questions he did not know how to phrase.

The anger got deeper and darker in his chest. He wanted to have the answers right now. He wanted Squall to be _better_ , for this to be over, for all of this to just be _done_. He wanted an explanation and none was coming.

There was a knife pressed flush to Squall’s chest, Light leaking out of her, and she was…insensate. He _hated_ this. This was – this should not have happened, it should have been two dead Hunters, not a living Hunter and whatever it was that had happened to Market 40-11 and Squall. Trading life for life only worked if people actually ended up _living_ afterwards.

If Squall’s own hubris was her downfall, she’d be far from the last Warlock to die from that particular problem endemic in their kind but god **_damn_** Cayde did not want that.

She was so close to a real death. It was infuriating. This was not necessary. None of this was fucking necessary.

The Speaker bent his head down towards Squall’s. A conversation, however blindingly one-sided carried on, the Speaker gently trying to urge Squall into awareness, and Squall was utterly unaware of it. Her eyes did not focus all the way on the Speaker. Blood poured from her nose and when she opened her mouth, blood mixed with spit dripping out of her mouth.

Cayde’s chest made a concerning click and he felt something in him wrench to the side. Zavala looked to him sharply - Cayde saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and did nothing. What was he going to do, come clean about whatever it was that had happened between him and Squall in those “business meetings”? No. Of course not. He was not going to do anything like that, but he may need to have something there in his chest looked at.

“ _Amaya_ ,” the Speaker whispered.

Squall’s head snapped to the Speaker, her mouth snapping shut and eyes focusing all at once. Solar-Light started burning at the edges of her broken armor, sparking up and smoldering before catching flame. That was the moment when the Speaker struck, slicing through the Light pouring from her chest.

Whatever it was that she was going to say was cut off in the scream that ripped out of her throat.

Squall’s back arched, and the Speaker could not pull his knife away fast enough to keep from the blade nicking her chin and throat. Market 40-11’s Ghost rocketed out of the Speaker’s hand, freed of its tether to Squall. Lask zipped into the air as well, their shell spinning wildly around.

“Thank the Traveler, you’ve done it!” Lask sighed, happily zipping through the air.

Keldrin reached out to Market 40-11’s Ghost and in a flash of Light, Market 40-11 reappeared. Nearly simultaneously, Paulie and Yeti-7 burst into the room from the Hangar-side door. Paulie cried out and rushed towards Market, crushing her fireteam-mate in a huge hug. Laughing, Market embraced her, dropping his head down and burying his face in her neck.

Squall swung her legs to the side, sitting up with a groan, spitting blood to the side. The Speaker looked her over, waiting and watching for the Light to start healing up the wounds on her body. The chest wounds, where she had driven Market’s Ghost into her chest to link her Light with his were the first ones to show any sign of healing, threads of Light flickering at the edges of broken skin.

“How are you feeling?”

“ _Never_ call me that again, Speaker,” Squall hissed, barely loud enough for Cayde to hear.

His Hunters approached him next, and Cayde slowly took his attention away from Squall, who was now engrossed in a conversation with both the Speaker and Ikora. He had work to do, and painfully, Squall stood, still bleeding. Ikora escorted her and the Speaker out of the room, Squall limping along, leaving a bloody trail behind her. Zavala was talking with Keldrin and Yeti-7.

As much as Cayde hated meetings, he wanted to know what the fuck had happened. Watching it was not the same thing as hearing the report, and getting the impression of what had happened from Market 40-11 and Paulie.

He could not help the way his eyes drifted to the door that Ikora, Squall, and the Speaker had gone through. He would get answers. He _would_.

* * *

It had been a…really long day, Squall reflected, as she staggered back to her apartment. Not even counting what had happened in the Prison, which had honestly been close to seventeen hours ago by now. No, her day had started close to forty hours ago and she was only just now being allowed “off”, because her body couldn’t take it anymore.

What she had done, turns out, helped Market and hurt her. The Light of the Traveler was not reacting to her as it usually had, as it had done ever since she had been reborn. It was coming back, just slowly. The Speaker likened it to any mortal recovering from straining a limb or muscle-group – she would heal, it just would take her a while.

Which meant no missions.

No Crucible.

No leaving the Tower save to go back to her apartment and rest.

She had only just now been cleared to leave the Tower and go lay down. Bone-tired did not begin to even cover what it was that she felt. Her chest ached, and the cut up her neck hurt pretty fucking bad, along with all of the other injuries up and down her body, but the Light was slowly working on healing her. It was likely that it would scar. It was likely quite a lot of things on her body would scar.

That was an odd thought…a scar, after so long was…weird. Uncomfortable, in a way. She had to keep her fingers from worrying at the weird feeling on her face and her chest. Her blood’s own smell clung to the air around her. A shower was needed. She smelled like stress and blood and exhaustion.

Her door shut behind her, and, tiredly, she directed Lask to go settle in to their little station. Lask settled in with a happy chirp, their shell relaxing open, but not quite off. Squall grinned at Lask, waggling her fingers at her Ghost who blinked their eye closed and went dormant. There was some not-insubstantial scarring that mimicked what had happened to Market’s Ghost, transferred over in the bonding of their Light, and Lask needed rest.

Looking at the damage made her heart beat over-hard in her chest. In the moment, everything had felt right, everything had just been what _needed_ to be done, but looking back at it too hard was enough to get the rumblings of a panic attack and matching adrenaline surge going, and Squall really could not stomach that again. She had been incredibly lucky that the worst that was happening was that her Light was quieted for a while as she and Lask both took the time to heal.

Maybe next time she wouldn’t do that whole thing.

Taking a deep, slow breath, Squall reached for her side-table lamp and flicked the switch.

Nothing happened.

Startled, and looking back over her shoulder to her front door, where the hallway lights still shone through, Squall flicked the switch a couple more times. So it wasn’t that the power was out, but something else. Confused, Squall flicked the switch a few more times, trying to remember if she had changed the light recently, or if it could even burn out because –

Movement caught her eye, a shift in shadow to the side, nearly too fast for her to track. Training kicked in too fast for Squall to chase the movement, keeping her scan across the room slow and easy. Whoever was in her room had to have come in through a window or, Traveler forbid it, be another Guardian, because the door was coded only to her, and she was near the top of the building, so there was no way someone could come in the window unless they had a jumpship and the ability to transmat.

Lask gave a confused whirring chirp, a sound they made when they saw a friendly Ghost – one they were not expecting to see.

It was the only alert Squall got before the barrel of a handcannon lodged up the base of her spine. A gloved hand wrapped around her throat and she felt a body press up against her back. She chanced a glance towards Lask, only to see her Ghost helplessly struggling against a cage of Light. No help from her partner, alone in a room with a Guardian who wanted to hurt her for unknown reasons.

Awesome.

Her head tilted back slowly, a shiver racing up her spine. Whoever had surprised her did not lean into her periphery, keeping just outside of it so she could not see them.

Squall tensed, trying to get a sense for how much Light she could muster up in her. Not enough to heal the wounds on her body, let alone Blink or throw a grenade. The cost of replacing her living space was negligible, she wasn’t worried about a fight wrecking the place. Really, right now, she was vulnerable in a way few Guardians ever could be, and she did not want to die to some random assailant in her home.

Exhaling slow, she reached a hand out, Light flickering at the edges of her fingertips. The person behind her shifted, looking down to her hand, clearly off-guard. Excellent. That was what she wanted. She turned her head and closed her eyes.

Solar-Light flared sun-bright, and from behind her, the Guardian flinched, pulling away in shock.

Squall dropped to her knees as the extent of the Light she could muster guttered out. She spun, and kicked at where she guessed the knee of this other Guardian was. Not wearing her armor, without access to any of her weapons without her Ghost, and caught off-guard, Squall was on the back foot. But she was still a good fighter. And this was still her apartment.

Her foot made contact, and she heard a grunt from the Guardian as she broke their knee. Unfortunately, they had their Light, and she didn’t. Her scramble was undignified as all fucking hell, and she rushed for Lask, trying to break through the barrier of Light that separated them, only to find that she could not do that either. Her light-show had been the extent of what she had to muster.

The other Guardian had recovered, and she had only the chance to hear a hip-sheath being ripped open before she was again, scrambling for distance. The knife of a _Hunter_ slammed into her side-table, narrowly missing pinning her hand to the piece of furniture. There were knives of her own in the kitchen, and she vaulted the countertop to get close. A pile of clean dishes clattered to her floor.

Her knife block was empty. Cool. Fucker had stolen her knives.

Great.

She grabbed it anyway, turned and threw it at the cloaked Guardian. The shadows seemed to be tight around their body, obscuring them, but the toss made them dart out of the way. She ran out of her kitchen, angling for her room now – she had a stash of weapons under her bed. Old guns she did not want to destroy, old weapons she had found and thought were nice but not nice enough to actually use and keep in her transmat-stores. They were still loaded though. She could defend herself.

The other Guardian grabbed the back of her shirt, fisting the collar and yanking backwards, hard enough for her vision to go spotty and a cough to rip out of her throat. Squall was reasonably sure she was bleeding again but it didn’t matter. She was in a fight. Shit happened.

She got her feet underneath her and drove her elbow backwards, aiming for the ribs. If this was an organic assailant, it would be a brutal strike that could break ribs.

Unfortunately, her elbow hit the solid metal plates of an Exo. Pain and numbing tingles raced up her arm. She cried out, falling forward, clutching at her maybe broken elbow and dropping to her knees. The Guardian behind her did not give her time to recover, diving down on her, trying to pin her to the floor.

The knife flashed, catching the ribbon of light from the hallway, and Squall managed to just fucking barely turn fast enough to avoid it, scrambling back to her feet, creating distance. Working through the pain (oh _gods_ the pain) Squall threw an elbow back towards the Exo’s neck, not trying to do damage – but Exo or not, getting hit in the throat threw people for a loop. With her other hand, she clawed at the knife and the hand holding it, managing to free the blade, turn it, and come up with it.

She stabbed out, a vicious counter, aiming for the throat. No mercy.

Blue eyes and a mouth backlit with orange looked up at her. Cayde’s brow plate dropped down, and he stared up at her. She stayed her strike, turning the blade away, unwilling to hurt Cayde. Too startled to parse that _he_ was attacking her, just stunned that it was _him_. In her apartment. Without being invited. 

What?

“Cayde?”

He lunged for the knife, disarming her easily before turning the blade and pressing an attack. The blade sliced up, aiming for the space between her ribs, and with a shout, she blocked it, reaching out to grab Cayde’s wrist and push down. The blade caught her forearm, slicing up her arm. Deep enough to bleed, not deep enough to cause any critical problems. Other than the fact that now that hand was slick and she could not bring enough Light up in her to heal it.

She hooked her foot behind his ankle and swept his leg, knocking him to the ground. He sprawled out, landing heavily as Squall struggled to put distance between him and her, clutching at the new wound up her arm. It hurt. She hurt, and without the Light, a brawl was taking too much out of her. She was already gasping for air, her lungs burning and her vision going spotty.

Cayde had the Light. He tackled her to the floor. Her shoulder and back hit the ground hard and she screamed, punching him in the cheek, trying to knock him off of her, but he was unmoved, grabbing at her wrist and pinning her down. Squall hissed as his hand closed over the cut on her arm, but he seemed unmoved, leaning up over her in a rush.

He bit her lip with his mouth-plates, overhard and bruising. Squall cried out against him, struggling to get a leg in position to kick him off of her. His mouth dropped to her shoulder, biting down again hard enough to bruise as the knife came up against her neck on the other side, the tip digging into the floor just above her shoulder, pinning her in place. Squall froze up, the bite of the blade familiar, but without her Light, deadly.

His other hand slid down her side, familiar and comfortable, and terrifying as Solar-Light flickered at the edge of his hand. Heat raced up her side and she flinched.

“Where’s your _fireteam_ now?” Cayde snarled against her neck, tightening his grip on her waist, pulling the knife down, the blade digging into her shoulder. "Should have _counted_ on them."

He kicked her legs wide, settling his hips in between her legs. Squall hated and loved that a frission of arousal shot up her spine. She had spent so long walking the line between life and death that now that there were actual stakes to the pain she felt, she couldn’t extricate the danger and the sensuality, especially with Cayde’s body pressing up against her. A shudder wracked her body and when his mouth closed over her throat, she could only muster a reedy whine in response.

His hand burned away her clothes, leaving only smoldering ashes over her under-suit in the wake of his touch. Cayde groaned when she rocked her hips against his, pinning her hip to the ground in retaliation. Her gut clenched, and she bucked in vain against his hand. He tore his mouth away from her neck, gritting his mouth-plates in begrudging pleasure as Squall pulled him down against her, looping an arm around the back of his neck and guiding his mouth back down to her shoulder and neck.

He grunted, reaching down between their bodies to tear her pants open, burning away what he could not remove immediately as the Light flashed to do the same for his clothes, tearing at her tough under-suit until it gave way. His cock was free, heavy and hot against her thigh, but he still took the time to run his over-heated fingers along her pussy, coating them in the slick that gushed from her. Cayde moaned brokenly at the feeling, and Squall echoed him as his fingers strummed her clit over-hard.

His cock thrust up into her in a single long movement, hard enough to drive her shoulder against the blade of his knife. Squall’s head snapped back and she screamed. She didn’t know if it was pain or pleasure or some fucked sideways version of both, simultaneously, but Cayde didn’t care.

His grip on the hilt of his knife was white-knuckle tight, and his entire arm was tensed. He grunted as she tightened on his cock, driving herself back down against him with a moan. Her shoulder hurt, blood dripped from the deepening wound. Squall reached up to cover Cayde’s hand on the hilt of the knife with her own hand. He moaned at the contact, the way her hand dragged the blade down against her shoulder harder, dropping his head down to her shoulder and biting down on her collarbone hard enough to rip a new groan out of Squall’s mouth.

Squall echoed the sounds he made, her voice pitched higher as the pain was not washed away by the Light, but after so long of getting used to the pain of dying, being shot, stabbed, blown up, melted, it wasn’t something she was averse to any more. The pain felt as sweet as the pleasure. Slick gushed from her, coating Cayde’s cock in sweet, delightful lubrication. The sound of his cock thrusting into her filled the room, wet and sloppy and decadent in a way few things were.

He pounded her relentlessly, holding her tight to his body, pressing her against the floor, pinning her down, venting none of the pressure in his chest but some of the overwhelming emotion rattling through his brain. Words poured out of his mouth, growled against her skin, hardly making sense at all. He was just full of _rage_ , and wanted to drown it all out up against her body.

She mewled against his shoulder, gasping for air, trying to find the words she needed to beg for a respite, because he was so _hot_ against her skin, burning her up. His Light was eating into her, burrowing through the ley-lines of her flesh, where her Light usually flowed. With nothing there now, Cayde’s Light roared in, pushing through her, burning everything in its wake. Solar-Light smoldered across his body, and Squall ached for it.

“ _Never_ do that again, not once, not ever again, you are _never_ doing that again, not ever, never, ever again,” he growled, reaching up to put a hand on her neck and hold her in place.

Squall keened, arching against him, an orgasm racing through her. Over her, Cayde choked on his words, losing the thread of what he was trying to say in the strangling pleasure that he found in Squall’s body. He pulled her tight to his chest, thrusting brokenly through his own orgasm.

She relaxed at the tail of her pleasure, going boneless in his arms, and Cayde pulled his knife out of the floor. It was slick with her blood, and in a rare display of a lack of caring, he didn’t bother trying to clean the blade, just threw it to the side. He grabbed Squall by the hips and thrust into her again. The pain of overstimulation was nothing compared to the pain that was still eating away at him inside.

It took only a moment for Squall to regain some of the finer motor control in her arms and with a hiss, she pushed Cayde away, getting one of her heels up against his hips and kicking him back, the fight roaring back into her. She only managed to get so far as to start standing up, before Cayde was on her again, dragging her back down to the floor. Squall shouted and struggled, throwing an ineffective punch at his ribs, bruising her knuckles and doing nothing more than that.

Turning away from him, she reached for the arm of her couch, trying to pull herself to her feet, the pain rushing back to the forefront of her mind now that Cayde was not fucking her.

He had every intention of fixing that, though. And he was the Hunter Vanguard. He got what he wanted.

Cayde stood, rolling the tension out of his neck and advancing on Squall. With a snarl, she rushed him, throwing a savage punch high, towards his brow-plate. Cayde dodged easily, reaching up to catch her wrist and twist it, driving her sideways against the wall of her apartment hard enough to send a picture frame clattering to the floor. He pinned her arm behind her back and pushed her chest up against the wall. His other hand fisted in her hair, shoving her face into the wall.

He kicked her legs wide, pressing his hips up against her ass, and dropping his face back into the crook of her neck. Her blood smeared across his cheek and chin-plates, but it didn’t really bother him. No, he was more interested in driving his cock back into her, which he did with wild abandon.

Squall, pinned up against the wall, Lightless and bleeding, hissed in discomfort when he set his mouth-plate over the new wound he had made in her shoulder. Cayde’s cock made a distracting counter to the Solar-Light slowly burning its way through her body once again. She found herself reaching backwards with her one free hand to cup the back of Cayde’s skull, pulling his face harder against her body, despite the pain. The responding moan and hard thrust from Cayde was all he could think to do.

When he released her pinned arm so he could grab at what remained of her pants with a hand wreathed in Solar-Light and tear them away, Squall just planted it on the wall in front of her. She didn’t try and get away, driving her hips back against his as best she could with the space she had been given. Cayde was not about to relinquish his grip on her hair, keeping that hand in place as he tore what he could get off of her, off of her.

Her panting was ragged and breathless, colored with bitten-back moans as Cayde took his way with her body. He wanted more of a fight than he was getting, but then again, as he pulled clothes and under-clothes away, he saw bruises and cuts that her clothes had covered.

There was a particularly nasty one over her hip, so he set his hand over it, his fingers digging in just at the border of the bruise, hard enough for her to feel, but not so much as to be cruel as he pulled her leg wider. His fingers found her clit again and he worked that little bundle of nerves mercilessly. Well and truly mercilessly, he strummed it, until Squall was screaming his name against the wall her face was pressed against.

It wasn’t enough.

By the _fucking_ Traveler it was not enough.

He came again and it did nothing to abate the fire and rage that burned in him. He was so fucking _pissed_ , and having her, knowing she was safe, it wasn’t enough. Fucking her wasn’t enough, he needed more from her, needed to consume her in every way, every last one of them.

Nothing abated the flame burning in him. He wanted.

Cayde growled her name against the side of her neck, and got a breathless “ _Cayde_ ” in response, which only made the flames in his chest burn hotter.

He turned her around and barred his forearm across her throat, his fist knuckling into the wall. He wasn’t trying to choke her, but the pressure was enough to make it clear that she was not supposed to move. Again, his cock sank into her, and he pulled one of her legs up over his hip to take a better angle for it.

Squall screamed his name, reaching out to grab onto the corners of his cloak. She held on for her life as Cayde fucked her up against the wall. His pace was relentless, and, unconcerned with making her cum, he took his own pleasure out of her body with abandon. He pressed his head against the wall next to her, turning his head to mouth at her ear, his tongue licking the back of the shell of it. She squirmed, helpless to stop his assault.

He game with a grunt, snapping his hips against her, metal plate slamming into organic flesh. She jumped and, with a long moan of her own, came as well, milking his cock for everything he had inside of him. Cayde gave it all, pinning her harder to the wall, starting his rhythm anew, aching for more.

It didn’t matter that it _hurt_ to thrust into her again, he wanted her, and she was trembling in front of him. He got another couple strokes into her before the pain of overstimulation was too much.

Hissing, he withdrew from her. Squall sighed, slumping against the wall. There was no more fight in her. She was exhausted. Bone deep tired, and hurt. Blood smeared along her wall as Cayde pressed his horn against the side of her neck. His hips jerked forward, absentmindedly thrusting, even with his cock not inside of her right then. He wanted more from her, because he was still burning up inside, but –

He grabbed her by the hips, pulling her back against him, grinding his aching cock between her thighs. He snarled when she shifted, trying to get away.

“No. Not yet. I’m not done with you, not fucking yet,” Cayde snapped.

Blinking stars out of her eyes, Squall shook her head and looked up at Cayde. He stared at her for a moment, blood and sweat slicking her mouth and neck. She was soft, organic, _human_ , and broken. There was no mechanic that could fix her, no one who could just make her _right_ because she was hurt and she had put herself in that situation.

She’d run in against everyone’s advisement. Alone. Without backup.

Cayde dipped down and lifted her, hefting her up over his shoulder and rushing her into her room.

He threw her, unceremoniously on the bed, and followed her down against the sheets. Pulling her legs wide, he dove down between them, pressing his mouth plates up against her slit, dripping with her own lust and his spend. It didn’t matter.

Holding her legs apart, his hands cradling the backs of her knees, keeping her from trying to kick out, Cayde flicked his tongue against her engorged clit. Squall cursed, reaching down to wrap a hand around Cayde’s horn, her thumb rubbing the edge of it, where she knew there was a thinner band of more flexible metal, just over the synth-weave beneath it. It was sensitive, one of the more sensitive parts of him. 

His tongue dove deeper inside of her, his breath hot against her mound, sending embers of Solar-Light up her body, burning more of her under-suit away, leaving her a wreck of mutilated clothing and broken skin beneath him. The rage had hardly abated at all, but when Squall’s next orgasm crashed through her, her back arching and breath snapping out of her lungs, she screamed when he moved his mouth back up  to nip at her clit, trying vainly to pull his head away.

She couldn’t muster the words she was looking for, but Cayde was willing to bet he knew what they were anyway. Unfortunately for her, _he_ wasn’t much in a listening mood right now.

“Hands on the headboard,” he growled at her.

Squall hesitated, blinking down at him, still in a post-orgasmic haze. Her hand did not move from his horn, her thumb still rubbing a distractingly _soothing_ pattern across that one part of his horn that could get him to start purring on nicer, quieter nights.

“Hands on the headboard or I’ll put them there myself.”

Solar-Light burned the air around him, settling across his shoulders and chest. He was still fully clothed, and he wanted it that way.

Slow to comply, Squall took her hand off his horn and reached back to touch her fingers to the headboard of her rather spacious bed. Wincing, she moved to relax her shoulder – the one that still bothered her, now more than ever, and Cayde smacked the side of her thigh. Startled, Squall shifted her body to give her shoulder the support it needed, but said nothing else.

“Stay there.”

The hand he had used to smack her thigh rubbed a gentle circle against her leg before diving back down. His mouth opened wide, his incredibly dexterous tongue curled around her clit, stroking and pulsing in time with the working of his jaw and mouth plates against her. Her soft moans of pleasure grew louder and louder still as Cayde worked relentlessly against her.

And he was merciless.

It did not matter how many times he brought her to orgasm, he kept pushing for another one. Her cries for “More!” bled into “Enough!” and he did not stop. She did not use the safeword, she did not pull her hands from the headboard, where her fingertips still gently rested. She said enough but not so much to mean it all the way through. She could stop him if she wanted to. Cayde fingered her when her legs lost the tension in them, pulling more pleasure out of her until her voice broke, sobbing on his name. He looked up from his work. 

She had stopped bleeding in most places, the tracks of blood muddled and diluted by the sweat that was sticking her hair to her skin. There was a blush all the way across her face, down her chest. Her hands were still in place, her eyes screwed shut and he could see the muscles all the way up and down her body twitching. Exhausted, overblown with pleasure, a Warlock out of their depth but still aware enough to do as they had been told. 

Why couldn't she have done this in the Prison?

Slowly, sinuously, he crawled up her body, his clothes finally transmatting away. Squall seemed unaware, only hiccupping when Cayde’s cock slid back into her again.

With all the gentleness in his body, the Solar-Light finally edging away, leaving him tired all the way down to his bones, he pulled her close. His thrusts were lazier now, devoid of the rapacious hunger from before. He turned her head towards his, kissing her softly, pulling her hands away from the headboard and guiding them back to his body. One to his hip, where the synth-weave skin was thin, and where her fingers found purchase against his hip-plates easily.

The other, delicately, guided back to his horn.

Squall sighed, turning her mouth to his, kissing him without any hurt or heat, tiredly rolling her hips in time with his thrusts. He moved his mouth from hers, down to the wound from his knife in her shoulder, messily licking and kissing the injury. He didn’t feel bad about giving it to her, until his chips reminded him that it would scar and that got a soft sigh of apology to spill out of his mouth. When his lower mouth-plate caught on her collarbone, she moaned, weakly swinging one of her legs over his hips, pulling him tighter to her.

His last orgasm rolled through him slowly, dragging every last remaining bit of energy from him. Cayde went limp, rolling to the side of Squall and gathering her into his arms.

She pressed her face to the side of his neck and breathed out, slow. Her body trembled, but neither of them had anything to say, not right then. Cayde fumbled for a blanket, and then, with a grumble, called his Ghost back to him to transmat his favorite blanket from his apartment onto Squall’s bed and the two of them. Lask floated into the room, regarding Squall carefully, zipping in to nuzzle against Squall’s neck. Squall smiled, reaching up to gently run her fingers across Lask’s shell.

After a moment of enjoying the touch, Lask floated over to Cayde, who grinned somewhat sheepishly at the Ghost.

“Sorry about the ca- _OW_!”

Lask zapped him, a small bolt of Arc energy jumping from the small Ghost to Cayde. Petulantly, Cayde pulled his blanket up to his chin, peeking up at the Ghost from under the blanket.

“Hey I said I was sorry!”

Squall huffed, laughing, but dismissing Lask. She twined a leg around Cayde’s and curled up next to him. There was nothing to say, nothing she wanted to say. Her body ached, and she was exhausted in so, so many ways. She just wanted to sleep.

“Squall, hey. Don’t fall asleep on me just yet,” Cayde said, softer now. “I need to talk to you.”

“Ikora already read me the riot act. You already broke into my apartment. What else is there to talk about?” she said tiredly, turning her face further against his neck, hiding from him up against his body.

“Why did you do it?”

“Someone had to.”

“It didn’t have to be you.”

“Who else?”

He had no response to that. The anger had bled out of him, leaving him tired and just…so very over it. She was back. She was alive. Barely.

“That’s…not a good answer.”

“It’s all I have to give.”

There was silence for a long while. Squall’s breathing slowed down, and she drifted closer to sleep. Cayde absently found himself pushing hair out of her eyes, his fingers tracing down her neck.

“Amaya, please. Answer me.”

Squall stiffened in his arms, and then pushed him away from her, extricating herself from the contact, leaving him lying in her bed, covered in her sweat and blood.

“I need a shower. Don’t want to bleed on the blanket,” she said, emotionlessly.

Cayde watched her stand up and move towards her shower. He followed, swinging his legs out of her bed and padding after her. Her shower started before he even made it halfway there, but she didn’t tell him to leave, or shove him away when he slid into her shower behind her. The water was cold against his plates, and Squall’s body was chill when he pressed himself up against her back.

She relaxed into him, leaning back against him, her head resting against his shoulder. He did his best to help wash her, his hands moving easily and lightly over her wounds, cleaning the broken flesh, caring for her, pressing gentle and apologetic kisses to the bruises he had left on her skin. The mangled mess of her chest, from where the fins of another’s Ghost had bit into her skin, he gently skimmed his fingers, and then his mouth, across the wound.

His knees touched the tiles of her shower, and gently, he turned her around, pulling her hips towards his mouth.

Water sluiced across them both, courtesy of the two showerheads, as Cayde gently took Squall’s pleasure back into his own hands. He was careful, soft where he had been hard before, letting her dictate the pace, even as she tiredly put a hand on his horn and collapsed down into his embrace.

Somehow, they ended up twined together on the floor of her shower.

It took him a moment to realize she was crying when she tried to take a breath, and a sob got caught in her throat. Her face was pressed to his neck, her body was clean, and the bruises and cuts were slowly, slowly healing.

He didn’t ask anything else. He just sat there, curled up next to Squall, in her shower as cold water washed over them both. It was relaxing, and a while later, when he realized Squall had fallen asleep, he reached up to turn the water off, and, carefully, picked her up. She didn’t stir more than to sling an arm around his neck and curl closer.

Cayde lay her down in her bed, climbing in next to her, pulling blankets and pillows up around her. He slid in next to her, gathering her up into his arms. She sighed, wrapped a leg around his waist and went to sleep.

His Ghost popped up next to him, hovering over his palm.

“Tell Ikora and Zavala I’m taking tomorrow off. No arguments. No responses,” he said quietly.

His Ghost gave a silent nod, and then dissolved into motes of Light again. There was silence, and he fell asleep in short order. Questions could wait until daylight. Or after that. Who knew. He could be patient, but for right now, sleep.


	5. Arc-Light

The next morning, Cayde woke up before Squall. Not unusual. That was usually how it went. He had work and meetings to tend to in his mornings, so he had gotten used to seeing her sleeping form left behind in her bed. Or his bed, the few nights she had chosen to collapse there instead of retreating to her room before falling asleep. He liked the nights where she stayed.

He kept his mouth-lights glow dimmed, looking over her as she slept. Some of her wounds had started to close up, the barest threads of Light flickering at the raw and broken edges of her skin. Gently, he ran the synth-weave pad of one of his fingers over the deep cut in her shoulder from his knife. Squall’s brows furrowed in her sleep, and one of her hands came up to weakly bat his away. The healing overnight had been focused primarily on that wound and whatever it was that she had done to her chest.

The fury that he thought he had excised from his chest started burning again, and he held her closer, pulling her in, covering her body with his. If he could just _will_ some of his Light into her, he would. He would do it in a moment, without hesitating because of course he would.

Even though he was steel and hard plates and sharp lines, Squall still managed to curl up against him and make it look comfortable. She certainly felt comfortable against him. Cool by contrast to his over-warm body, her soft curves and organic body were a lulling sweetness and he wished he could let himself relax back down into sleep.

But no, he was awake and that meant he was _awake_. He did not want to get up, but he was awake. And in the filtered light that slotted through Squall’s blinds, bruises from his hands and the incidental injuries of her Fireteam’s mad dash backwards through the Prison of Elders became more and more obvious. It was one thing to appreciate how gorgeous organics could be, but it was another to see the marks of war on their bodies. He had put some of those marks there. That fact was not lost on him.

Rough shit like that was far from out of the norm for the two of them, let alone other Guardians. They were fucking immortal. Rough sex, deadly sex, just fucking beating the tar out of each other because they were made for war and battle and sometimes it was the only way you could get yourself to think straight, it did not mean anything because they’d get back up.

Except Squall.

Except for right now, and except for her. He could wrap his fingers around her throat and she’d be dead before she even realized he was threatening her. He was an Exo, his body was built for war, there wasn’t a single part of him that wasn’t made to destroy. It didn’t matter that his brain was organic, or had been at one point. He was Exo now, and if he wanted to kill someone like her – like she was in this moment, it would take no effort.

The thought was…bad.

He blinked it away and pulled Squall closer, perhaps a little uncomfortably tight, since she made a halfway-there whimper under her breath and pushed ineffectively on his hip. Cayde relaxed his grip only fractionally.

There was a frisson of tension through his chest, though. Something he just couldn’t let go of now that the ugliness of it was staring in his face. He was used to being able to be rough with her, being able to push her and pull her and have her do the same to him. Last night, she had even put up an admirable level of brawl for someone with no Light against an Exo. Let alone a Guardian Exo. Hell, if he hadn’t hidden her knives, he was pretty certain that she’d have managed to tag him with one or two of them. Getting hit with that knife block was not fun, for sure. She’d even opened with breaking his knee.

And if he hadn’t known that all of her guns were stored in a fingerprint locker under her bed, she’d have gotten to them and lit him up. Even if she didn’t use it that often, he knew she had one of those terrifying fusion rifles that’d melt right through his chest if she got even a slightly winged shot off on him. With no Light of her own, she’d not have been able to get him back up, but she could’ve…well it didn’t matter.

But he had won because he had the Light and she didn’t.

There was no draw scenario. No way for her to really, truly beat him. Even if, intellectually, she could run circles around him, and _fuck_ was that hot as all goddamn hell, but in a fight, right now, she would lose every time. Because if she lost _once_ , it was over. He had the luxury of trying over and over again, however many times it took to beat her. She…did not.

There was a power there that Guardians had, that no one else could ever lay claim to. Squall, without her Light, was just another enemy that he could fell without any problem.

Carefully, delicately, he turned so he could press his mouth to the wound in her shoulder. The one he had caused. His plates were hard, sharp edges and layered metals that approximated an organic’s mouth, but they were still sensitive. He carefully put his mouth over the wound, just covering it for a moment, the dark _need_ and _want_ of eternal war roaring in the back of his mind before quieting enough for him to draw back and press a sad kiss to the wound. It was not enough as an apology.

He’d have to do something else for her.

But right now, she was stirring in his arms, tilting her head away from his mouth with a sigh, and then a prolonged groan.

“I…forgot what it was to wake up with an actually _sore_ back. Ugh. Everything hurts, bruises ache all over everywhere, I smell like blood, my mouth tastes awful and you’re so _warm_ ,” Squall whined, twining herself up against Cayde.

“Maybe next time don’t do the weird shit with your Light and just come home safe instead of playing the hero, then, hm?” he said, half joking, half serious. Mostly serious.

Actually, really very serious. His words were light but his tone didn’t match it.

Squall was quiet in his arms at that, considering his words carefully before responding. He felt, almost immediately, like he had overstepped some boundary or another. Warlocks who took the time to respond were Warlocks who were about to give you some _very_ bad news.

“Cayde. If I could bring back Andal Brask, but lose my Light forever in doing so, what would you have me do?”

His heart stopped. The click it made was over-loud in her suddenly too-silent room. Squall didn’t move, didn’t indicate that she had any intention of moving and Cayde was probably quiet for a moment too long.

“What?”

She didn’t stir, even as he jostled her shoulder with one of his hands. Her face was buried up against the side of his neck, tucked into the crook of his shoulder and when he tried to pull away, her fingers found the seams between the plates on the back of his hips and held him where he was. He could have pushed her off but he didn’t want to.

“If I went and found Brask’s Ghost, tethered his Ghost to my Light, and then sacrificed every last bit of Light in me to bring back _Andal Brask_ , would that be wrong? Would I have done bad? Am I worth more to the Vanguard than Brask would be? Would I be reprimanded? ‘Hi guys, sorry I won’t be serving the Guardians or Vanguard anymore, Light went out, here’s Andal Brask though.’ Is that _wrong_?”

“…You couldn’t do that, though.”

He knew he wasn’t answering the question, he knew he wasn’t. But he couldn’t bring himself to consider what it would be for the question to be answered, he couldn’t let himself say that he’d want Andal back. He wouldn’t let himself say that he’d not be overjoyed to see Andal come home, after all this time.

“It’s not the question I’m asking, Cayde. I’m asking you, if I had the opportunity to bring Brask back, should I turn away? Knowing I _could_ bring him back, should I let him remain dead because…I dunno, Ikora would be down a Warlock? _One_ Warlock.”

“I-I…” Cayde struggled for words, trying desperately not to say the ones that were traitorous and _wrong_ for this situation.

“You wear his cloak, Hunter mine. You don’t need to answer. Zavala got the same way when I asked him about Saint-14. Every Guardian is important, sure, we are all “Gifts from the Traveler”, Guardians, Protectors, massively important mostly immortal beings that are built in the shape of the dead to kill those that will kill that which we care about. Guardians are important. Some of them are just _more_ important. Brask, Saint-14, Timur…countless others. Died, gone dark, somewhere way out there in the world. If I could bring one of _them_ back, wouldn’t it be better? It’d –“

“Stop, Squall. Please, just stop.”

Squall huffed, but quieted herself. Cayde kissed her hair, pulling her closer to him. He wasn’t good at finding the words he needed in this moment but –

“No matter how much anyone would want one of the old heroes back, I don’t want to not have a you. I want to have a you. You are…you are. Squall, I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to not have you.”

“I wouldn’t be dead, Cayde. Just Lightless. There’s a pretty big difference there. Not-a-Guardian is not the same as dead.”

“You know what I mean, Squall.”

“I don’t, Cayde. I really don’t know what you mean. Because you would jump at the chance for Brask to be back. You would. Just like Zavala would kill for Saint-14. Like Saladin would want the rest of the Iron Lords back. There isn’t a single one of you who wouldn’t make the trade. But you’ll all say it’s not worth it. That every Guardian is important, that each Guardian brings something new to the Traveler’s Light that we were all _chosen_ for a reason and I do not see why the reason for my choice simply could not be to bring one of them back.”

Cayde huffed at her and tilted her head up to his so he could kiss her. It was meant to be conciliatory, just a quick peck to assure her that he wanted her here, he didn’t want Andal here instead of her – and maybe his brain chips got a little confused and started thinking about what it’d be like to have Andal and Squall at the same time, the familiar sensation of Andal’s legs wrapped around his hips and Squall situated somewhere over or under or just against Andal’s mouth aaaand okay he’d gotten carried away and now he was kissing Squall a little harder than intended.

It didn’t matter, because she moaned and looped an arm around the back of his neck, pulling him tighter to her, kissing him harder than he had intended to be kissed but, you know, fuck it. He slid his body on top of hers, careful not to rest too much of his weight on her. Without her Light, he was certain he was a fair bit heavier than she could manage, and he didn’t want to push but her legs still settled on either side of his hips and she still urged him on when his mouth dipped to the side of her neck and she was still naked so it was still easy to guide his cock back into her.

She whimpered his name sweetly, arching under him like she had done so many times before, but without the Light, she couldn’t move him off of her. There was nothing she could do to stop him, no secret reserves of Power to push him away, or take command of the situation. There was only him, and she was so much less than he was in that moment.

He could do anything to her and she was utterly powerless to stop him. There was something dark in his chest, something that he knew lived in every Guardian, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs, that unfurled and urged _More_ from him at the realization, but it was so much easier, and so much less to just carefully grab one of her legs and spread it wide so he could thrust deeper and harder into her.

Squall sighed, delightfully and deliriously out of her mind already, rolling her body against his, driving herself down on his cock. Cayde wanted to take more from her but, without her Light, this was everything she could give him. If he tried for _more_ there would be nothing left of her by the time Lask had enough Light to bring her back.

He was in a moment of balance and tension, but it did not matter as much as holding himself up and taking this slow. As slow as his impatience could manage, really. All in the back and hips, holding his shoulders stable over her, keeping his mouth pressed to hers as he slowly, methodically…fucked her. There was something different about this, being slow, careful, thoughtful, letting his Light pour off of him, and feeling nothing resonating back to him.

She was bruised, bleeding like she was in the middle of the field but it had been nearly a full twenty four hours since she’d been in the heat of battle. Even after the shower late last night, she still smelled something of ether, blood, and the metallic tang of Eliksni architecture. Her hands, lacking the usual force behind them, bolstered by the Light, merely skated across his plates, no after-effects of her Light playing against his, just the soft drag of human fingers across synth-weave and metal plates.

Something in his chest clicked and Squall tiredly huffed a laugh at him, licking a stripe across his mouth when he pulled away from her.

Her eyes were pale blue, deepening in color closer to her pupil. No sparks of Light flickered in the silver, no deep colors, no swirl of the Traveler’s touch. Whatever Light there was in her, it was probably more concerned with trying to heal the wounds instead of making her eyes do the _thing_ he so closely associated with her. Instead, she was just painfully human beneath him, a bruise creeping up over her chin, chasing the cut from the Speaker’s knife, eyes wide, pupils blown and a grin, that same shit-eating _grin_ on her face.

Her hair was mussed, half-curling (had he known her hair was curly?) from where she had slept on it, sticking up at all sort of odd angles. It looked like there was a bruise starting under the corner of one of her eyes, something incidental, nothing serious, but he noticed it and it made him…hurt.

In a rush, he dropped his mouth back to hers, slinging his arm around her waist, pulling her up and holding her in place so he could move against her with a little more speed and depth and precision and –

“ _Cayde_ ,” she breathed against his mouth.

It undid him. Overload crashed through his systems, a weirdly hollow fulfillment now that Squall’s Light wasn’t roaring against his plates in time with his. A ragged thrust or three and he was melting, falling to the side in her bed, pulling Squall atop him, letting her hold his vents closed and bask on him. And also, maybe so that her hair would fall forward and let him look at her like that.

She grinned at him, and leaned up to kiss the very tip of his horn. Breathless, blushing, and still smiling ever so softly, Squall looked down at him. Painfully mortal. Human. War-torn. Tired in a way that any warrior would be tired after a hundred and seventy-odd years of fighting would be. Sleepy morning exhaustion didn’t explain the sadness that hovered in her eyes.

“Don’t…do that again, Squall. What you did for Market. They appreciate it, and hell, I didn’t lose a hunter, but I don’t want to lose you. Not to the darkness. Not ever,” he said, only a little breathless as languor stole across him.

Squall regarded him for a moment, propping herself up so she could look down at him.

“I can’t promise that. You know that. Warlock stuff.”

“You aren’t a Warlock right now. Just someone in my bed-”

“This is _my_ bed, Cayde. You broke into _my_ apartment.”

“Shhh, you know what I mean.”

She rolled her eyes, her fingers dancing nonsense patterns over his plates. There was silence for a good long while as her fingers moved over his plates. The feeling was pleasant, the drag of the pads of her fingers against synth-weave and metal was soothing. Eventually, she paused, lifting her hand from where she had been drawing, and then bent down to press her mouth to where she had been drawing. Cayde jumped, her mouth surprisingly cold against his plates and then, with a yelp, he felt his Light _shift_.

He tried to pull away, but Squall moved faster, coming up with one of _his_ knives in between her teeth. Flickers of Solar Light danced down the blade and he stared, blankly up at her.

“ _How_?!” he chirped, too surprised to try and cover the startled sound.

Squall waggled her eyebrows at him, settling back on his hips, naked and so, just so fucking cocky. Stupid Warlocks looking stupid sexy when they were proud of whatever they had done that defied any actually logical explanation. He was certain she had one – she definitely had an explanation, but it would go over his head, for sure.

With a flourish, she took his knife from her mouth. It fizzled into motes of Light, returning to Cayde’s stash. It was not permanent, whatever she had done, but demonstrative enough or him to get the idea. He had, perhaps, somehow managed to underestimate her. Again. His gaze dipped to the mess of the center of her chest, where she had shoved a Ghost into her skin. There were cuts that he could see vaguely representing the fins of Market’s Ghost, and a circular burn where the eye of the Ghost had burned Light out of her.

His surprise faded into sobriety again.

“Circles, darlin’. Circles. I _am_ a Warlock. Light or no. And-“

“Amaya, come on, enough of this.”

She flinched, looking away from him sharply. Tension raced up her body, and for a moment it looked like she was going to pull away and leave. He wanted to hold her and keep her from leaving but knew better than to try and cage her in. If she thought she could leave, maybe she would stay.

“I wish…you’d not call me that. It’s not my name,” Squall said tiredly. “It’s complicated, but not my name and I don’t want to hear it. It’s…it’s an echo of an old memory. A painful one.”

She moved as if she was going to get off of him, and then thought better of it, leaning down over him to kiss him again. It was a gentle kiss, soft, but lingering. Sad, in a way. He didn’t push the issue.

“You know I can’t make that sort of promise, Cayde. Out in the field, I have to make calls. Sometimes they’re wrong, don’t…don’t think I don’t know what I did was not the best choice. But I couldn’t do _nothing_. I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t hesitate, because if I did, two Guardians were going to die. I wasn’t made a Guardian to sit back and watch when that happened. I wasn’t brought back to the Light to do what was safe or stable. I am a Guardian.”

He brushed the back of his knuckles across the cut on her chin. Not hard enough to even hurt, but he could feel the broken skin, the way the scab that had formed was still a little sticky, and halfway stuck to his plate before he pulled away.

“You sound like a Hunter,” Cayde said, unable to hide the tone of fondness that had crept into his voice.

“I _am_ a pretty bad Warlock, ask Ikora.”

Cayde laughed, and pulled her down against him again. She went willingly, giggling with him, nuzzling the side of his neck, nipping the wire she’d all but imprinted her teeth on until Cayde’s vision went fritzy and his chest clicked again. He trembled underneath her, utterly entranced by her. Even without her Light, she could make him purr, make his chest melt. He carefully looped his arms around her waist and held her in place. It was comfortable and she wasn’t near heavy enough to be a problem for him to support her.

“Transmat some ramen, I’m hungry,” Squall complained playfully.

“The best places won’t set up transmat for their food.”

“ _Ugh,_ what’s the point of sleeping with the Hunter Vanguard if I can’t get ramen transmatted to my room without having to get dressed?”

Whatever boundary he had overstepped was being moved past in witty repartee, and even if it nagged at Cayde that she was still dodging the question…he understood. Every Guardian had their own ghosts, big and small, but the nonanswer did not settle well with him.

“I fuck you sesnseless, and you know it,” he snapped back, grinning at her.

With a laugh, she shoved him away. He humored her and moved more than she had really managed to push him because, well, no Light meant she was nowhere near strong enough to really move him.

“You’re _okay_ , don’t get a big head about it. Solid seven on a scale of ten, not bad for a Hunter. Room for improvement.”

Shocked, horrified, aghast, Cayde put a hand on his chest and stared at her. She met his gaze evenly, still grinning. Her insult had landed, and even if he knew it was a joke, the fact that she had needled just _so_ to get a rise without any fang in her words…

Cocky looked _too good_ on Warlocks.

“I’m hurt!”

“You’ll manage. Ramen?”

Her gaze dropped from him, and play-mournfully she looked down at the deep cut in her shoulder, healing now, before looking back up at him. An artistically overdone pout painted itself across her face. Fuck, he was helpless against that.

His clothes transmatted back on. Even his cloak, which he pulled the hood up on out of habit, found its place on his body, the familiar weight and smell of it a comfort. Cayde didn’t miss the way her eyes dipped to the cloak, the way she stared for a moment before turning away. There was a struggle in his chest, the need to want to push her for more information, to remind her that he really, truly, did not want Andal back more than he wanted her there, but…it wasn’t the right time.

“Yeah, yeah, ramen. The usual?”

“I trust your discretion,” she said, propping herself up against the headboard of her bed.

Her sheets were twined around her hips and legs, and before he could even ask, Sundance was at his side, snapping a quick picture before spinning into motes of Light. Squall grinned and tilted her head to the side, permissively. It was a good shot, and she trusted his intentions with the picture. Cayde had more than a few pictures of her at this point, and she was not the sort to tell him to knock it off. She thought it was endearing, the way he’d stop and take pictures of her or anything else that caught his fancy.

“You keep lingering, and they’ll sell out, Hunter.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going, I’m going.”

* * *

The door to Squall’s apartment was unlocked when he came up to it, which was good, because his arms were full of ramen and ramen related accoutrement. He kicked a leg up, dropped his heel down on her door’s handle and pushed in. He wasn’t really certain what he was going to see when he came into her apartment, but he was not expecting –

Squall was sitting, half in a silk and lace dressing gown, one of the shoulders slid off her still damp skin, hair slicked back and a collar mic on. She definitely wasn’t wearing any underwear, because the top of the dressing gown was slid down far enough for that to be…really obvious. Four different feed-screens were up in front of her, and from where he was standing, he couldn’t make out what it was that was on them. Her focus was shifting between the four different views quickly, barely even flicking to him in the door, other than to gesture towards her kitchen.

“Keldrin, servitor dropped in behind the ketch-hull. Market, watch your left side, couple of vandals hiding up high, should be able to sneak a grenade up there and nail them before they shoot. Shock rifles…hurt.”

She did not receive any responses, the video feeds were muted, more than likely to keep poor Lask from being overwhelmed by trying to transmit all that information from four different feeds. Cayde circled slowly, watching her watch the screens, trying _very_ hard not to be overly distracted by the exposed stripe of flesh all the way down the center of her chest. Squall didn’t even turn to acknowledge him, too focused on her fireteam and the call-outs to give Cayde any attention.

Quietly, he put the ramen down in her kitchen and then, carefully, lounged up against the wall, leaning and watching Squall work with her team from a distance.

She was impeccable on the call, noticing issues and problems in their formations before they arrived at a critical point, directing Hunter and Titan alike to the best positions for their abilities. Watching her work, watching her move from screen to screen, laughing at whatever jokes were signed from her fireteam over their shoulders for her, responding to questions in time and only relaxing when the last enemy was down.

“Paulie, Yeti, could you guys check perimeter for me, make sure we don’t get any surprise Eliksni dropping in on us. Market, Kel, look around for anything interesting. There’s always something cool.”

Cayde signed something, catching Squall’s attention only after he had finished signing.

“[What?]” she signed back. “Yeah Market, show me that, that looks fascinating, don’t touch it though, just let your Ghost near it for some scans, Lask and I will review from here.”

“[You look hot like that. C-a-l-i-e-n-t-e.]”

Squall laughed, and then covered her mouth.

“Nothing, Kel, _no that was not my I-think-you’re-hot laugh!_ ”

Cayde’s brow plate shot up. A wicked, sinful grin worked itself across his face. Her team could hear her, but didn’t know he was there. Squall did not seem to be willing to reveal that he was there, which he was a little thankful for, he had two Hunters on her fireteam now and as much as he didn’t mind being caught out, he still _really_ did not want Ikora to know.

“Kel! It was not! Yes I have someone over, stop it! Maybe it _was_ my I-think-you’re-hot laugh and maybe you’re messing up my game! Shut the fuck up!”

“[Tell ‘em how I rocked your _fuckin_ ’ world. How about that thing I did with my thumb when you were in the wall, or how about that time you and Shaxx and I spent that night together or even that time where I made you literally melt into a puddle of Solar-Light with my horn?]

Squall blushed scarlet, shaking her head.

“[Fuck you, fuck you so much. I’m not telling them that, go back to standing there and looking pretty.]”

There was a pause, a beat as Squall looked to her screens. Keldrin was stooped over into the field of view for Market’s transmission, signing quickly back to Squall. Cayde watched her blush deepen.

“Thank you for reminding me that Lask transmits my sign-to-speak, thanks Kel, really thank you so much can you go back to focusing on that thing on the ground. I swear to the Traveler that if you don’t just look at the fucking thing on the ground I’m going t- _no it is not Van’je I told you we were over._ Just look at the thing on the ground!!”

She had her head in her hands and was just shaking it back and forth. Next to her, Lask blinked between the screens and Squall. She held a hand up to her Ghost, a single finger extended.

“Lask you say _nothing_.”

Lask chirped an entirely-too-peppy, “But what about all that stuff you were saying about how good you got fucked last night?” and, en masse, all of her screens were full of the other Guardians, signing a rapid series of names and nicknames directly to their Ghosts, and Squall ended up, head in her hands, leaning forward, just groaning under her breath while all four of the others tried to wheedle a name out of her.

“Stop, stop, stop, just look at the thing on the ground for me, come on. Lask, you’re the _worst_ , just please look at the thingy on the ground I want to get a good look at it for the translation and understanding of it.”

There was a pause.

“No you can’t just ‘ask Cayde’ about it. He’s a _Hunter_ , what’s he going to know about it that I won’t? Huh? Just _show me the thing_ ,” she hissed.

At the mention of his name, Cayde took his attention away from Squall, looking to the screens again. He was always curious as to what Guardians chose to sign for his name out in the field. When he wasn’t watching, he knew that plenty of the Guardians used different names for the Vanguard, especially. He loved that he’d see Guardians signing “Shaxx” with holding a hand to their temple, thumb and pinky extended, thumb against their head, other fingers held down while they gestured grandly with the other arm. The shorter Guardians even got up on tip-toes for it. He’d sent Shaxx so many of those videos.

So when he saw his two Hunters signing _Socks_ out from their forehead, where _his_ horn was, followed by _Hunter_ he had to bite back a scathing rebuttal. That shit was only funny when it wasn’t about him.

“[That’s just rude! Socks?! _Socks?!_ ]”

Squall tried her best not to react, even as Cayde gesticulated wildly from behind her screens. She couldn’t communicate anything back to him because her signing would be picked up and transmitted elsewhere, so instead she just watched Cayde slowly lose his mind, an ever-widening smile on her face.

“Yeah, you have a Warlock on the team, there’s no need to bother Cayde. He won’t know as much as me, especially since this is Eliksni stuff, but if you could please just _show me_ the _thing_. This is Warlock know-how now.”

“[I know what I’m talking about, they can ask me, stop being a shit about Hunters, we’re great and you know it, but **_Socks_?!** ]”

She laughed, unfortunately when one of her fireteam was paying attention.

“Yeah, they have a comment, but it does not bear repeating and has no forbearance on you fucks showing me the _thing_ on the ground!”

“[How dare you! Tell them not to call me Socks! I got you ramen!]”

Squall huffed, flopping backwards on the couch. Her dressing gown gaped open and Cayde finally stopped signing.

He stared. Openly.

Cause goddamn.

The Light sparked angrily at the corners of her wounds, slowly closing up. More rapidly now than it had been. The scars remained behind, but the bleeding stopped, the scabs had mostly healed over. She was naked under that dressing gown, and he was still more than a little fucking distracted by that. Stupid organics looking so stupidly pretty underneath everything they wore.

“Alright, _thank you_ Paulie for finally showing me the thing. Can you have your Ghost scan it and send the data over? This is a fascinating piece of Eliksni engineering, and I want to see if I can understand how they put it together out of what they have available to them.”

A pause.

“ _No I am not telling you who I have in my rooms Keldrin shut up._ ”

Cayde watched her, slowly and carefully wrangle her fireteam into understanding that she was not going to talk about just who it was that she had in her room and elicit whatever information she wanted from the “thing” that they had found.

“Alright, great. Good job. Make your reports, I’ll make mine, and I’ll see you all later on tonight.”

Cayde’s Ghost pinged almost immediately. Loudly. Definitely loud enough to be picked up by Lask.

Squall flinched and closed her connection with the other Guardians just as Paulie’s voice came over Cayde’s Ghost. There was a moment, pregnant with its implication of silence as Paulie waited, listening, contemplating, and then, carefully, starting her report. Squall stayed quiet in the background, signing for Lask to not accept any current messages, or if they were urgent, to just have a visual marker, but still indicate that Squall was currently unavailable.

Unsurprisingly, Keldrin and Yeti-7 both immediately blew up her messages, and Squall did her best to respond to the messages without giving up the erstwhile secret of Cayde standing in her room, responding to his Hunters, even though it was his day off.

Not that he really had a day off, ever.

Besides, he wanted to hear what was going on and why his Hunters had decided to make a four-person fireteam. Squall quietly padded around him, grabbed one of the ramen containers, checked to make sure he was not in a video conference with Paulie, before leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek.

His chest whirred at that, a soft purring of machinery that was, unfortunately, definitely loud enough for Paulie to hear. And comment on.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, nothing, don’t worry about it. Tell me about this thingie you found that your new Warlock friend said I wouldn’t understand.”

“…I didn’t tell you she said that, Sir,” Paulie said carefully.

“She’s a warlock, it’s not a hard bet to take, they always talk crap about us,” Cayde said, only ever so _slightly_ too quickly. “What’s the thingie?”

Squall grinned and went back to her couch. Cayde was not far behind, finishing up his talk with Paulie before slinking to Squall’s couch and curling up next to her. It was his turn to pout and silently beg, looking up at Squall as she ate.

“You have your own, Cayde,” Squall said, still moving to lasso some noodles and pork belly onto her chopsticks and offer it to Cayde.

“Yeah but I’m so comfortable right here. Feed me, I want to be pampered by a gorgeous Guardian.”

She sighed fondly, adjusting herself on the couch and nudging Cayde down until he was lying in her lap, her ramen resting on his chest. He felt her hands gently caressing his skull-plate, petting the sensitive plates and wirings that were there. No Light resonated in her touch, but it was still so, so nice. Casual. Gentle. Soft.

Alternating feeding herself and dropping noodles into Cayde’s waiting mouth, Squall slowly finished her ramen. Lask, next to her chimed a few times, and she turned to her Ghost after a particularly important-sounding one.

“What is it?”

“Ikora needs to speak with you. It is an urgent matter. She understands if you are, _ahem_ , in-her-words “Indisposed with what are certainly exceptionally important meetings with the Hunter Vanguard at the moment” and-“

Cayde gave a long and pained “Ooooooofff,” from his position on her lap, wincing. Well that was one secret that absolutely wasn’t one anymore. It was now only a matter of time before Ikora tried to take him aside to have a _discussion_ about what he was doing with Squall. Unfortunate.

“-But she does have a rather urgent need of you. I’ve reported back on our recovery, but she’s still asking for us to come ready for a fight. Says she doesn’t expect it to be necessary, but with our transmat still weak, she doesn’t want us caught off guard and unprepared.”

Squall sighed.

“Yeah, alright, I think I know what this is. Good timing. I’ll be ready in 30, let Holliday know I’ll need my jumpship actually prepped for whenever I need to head out, drop her like a couple grand in glim, I know she hates being asked to do that. Throw a case of that crap beer she drinks in too.”

Lask chirped and then vanished again, spinning sideways into motes of Light.

“You’re not going in,” Cayde started as Squall picked up the remains of her bowl of ramen and bounced a knee gently up against the back of his shoulder, trying to get him to move. He declined to move.

She didn’t respond, leaning forward to put the ramen on the table when Cayde made it clear he was not moving. Sliding out from under him, she got up, moving towards her room, mentally taking stock of what she had available to her for this. She’d have to go visit her vault in order to grab the weapons she would want to use. Honestly, it probably would be better to wait for her and Ikora to have their chat before selecting a weapon loadout, and without a strong transmat connection, it’d be hard for her to keep any big number on hand.

Worse things had happened.

Squall sighed, rolling her shoulder out. That still hurt a little more than expected, but she had to push through. The Light was coming back, slowly, not necessarily as fast as she would like, but there was still even a chance that she was not going to have to go out into a fight. Being prepared wasn’t the worst thing.

“Squall, you are _not_ going in,” Cayde repeated, sitting up and following her back into her bedroom. “You’re in no state to go into the field, damn whatever Ikora says, you stay _here_.”

She was already into her secondary under-suit, the primary needing some pretty heavy repairs after Cayde burned and cut it the night before, pulling on her second nicest pair of boots. Her pants were just barely on, belt was in place, unbuckled, but through all the loops, gaping open, which was unfairly handsome on her, and she was pulling on a second layered over-shirt to pad out her robes that Lask had already laid out for her, on her bed.

There was a hip sheath in place at her side, a trio of knives inside of it. Her clothes half-on, hair mussed and the unmistakable pre-battle tension hovering in the air around her made her _really_ fucking hot right then, but that was secondary to the fact that she had torn the still-healing scab on her chin open and there was fresh blood already spearing down her neck. She was _hurt_ and she should not be going out into any sort of fight.

Squall looked up to him, that same stupidly fucking sexy half-smirk on her face as she zipped and buckled her pants in place, haphazardly tucking her over-shirt in to the front of her pants and reaching back for her robe. Her belt buckle was something Cayde would have bought for himself – an enamel and brass affair in the style of the Warlock crest, but with a stripe of iridescent orange down the center.

Warring between thinking this was _really_ hot, and intimate in a way that few Guardians ever were around each other, and wanting to sit her down and keep her in her apartment, safe from whatever it was that Ikora was going to ask from her, Cayde didn’t really react in time before her robes were on and she was fiddling with the clasp of her bond.

“Would you like the honors, Cayde?” she asked, holding her arm out, nodding towards the last clasp on her Bond.

Each class had their own little hiccups with their signifiers of belonging. Before going out into the field, he knew his Hunters liked to have someone on their Fireteam tug the collar of their Cloaks, just to check that it was settled correctly and wasn’t going to get snarled. You wanted someone who was lucky, someone who didn’t get stuck in a trap the last time they went out on patrol to do it, so that you could take some of that luck. Warlocks …rarely let non-Warlocks touch their Bonds, and a lone Warlock would do up their clasps easily, by rote memorization. But they would let the people they trusted to have their back click the final clasp closed.

Ikora had let him have the honor of it time and time again, when Zavala wasn’t looking. Squall looked at him, grinning, eyes sparkling as he reached out and flicked the clasp closed. His fingers closed around her arm, holding her still, pulling her close, encircling her hips with an arm, dropping his forehead to hers.

“Stay _here_ ,” Cayde demanded, tightening his grip on her again. “That’s an order.”

Squall kissed him, cradling his jaw in her hands, gently deepening the kiss. Her mouth was sweet and drugging, and Cayde was definitely still focused on keeping her in her room, away from doing _wrong_ , away from the danger that could actually, permanently, kill her…but her mouth on his made so many of his brain-chips shut down. He wanted her.

She pulled away, and he made to chase after the touch of her mouth on his, but she held his face away from hers.

“You’re not my Vanguard,” Squall whispered, before vanishing into motes of Light, blinking away, her Cheshire cat grin wiping away into nothingness.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he whimpered to the suddenly empty room. “That is hotter than it has _any_ right to be.”

* * *

The next handfuls of weeks were. Agony.

Squall had so much work to do, trying to prepare herself for a mission she and Ikora had been working on for years at this point. And it wasn’t that she was avoiding Cayde-6, not really, she was just really, very busy and he was a distraction. A really, really attractive distraction.

She really could not entertain him right then. The work that she and Ikora had been doing was delicate, an attempt to make a decisive strike against the Vex on Mars, and she needed, really, to focus. So the messages Cayde would send her at all times – some useful, just reminders to eat or take a shower, things that Warlocks at work often forgot. Other times it was invitations to come drink, wheedling and cunning to try and convince her to come to his room and bounce on his cock.

Accompanied with pictures.

Just so many pictures.

If she got a pictures message from Cayde, she had to keep a straight face and not open it right then. Because it was all just Cayde. Just him.

Shirt rucked, one hand pulling his shirt high up on his chest as the other pushed his unbuckled pants low, cock exposed and weeping, the orange lights casting shadows across the rest of his body.

Naked, shoulders pressed to the tiles of _her_ shower, water sluicing down his body, head thrown back as one of his hands fisted his cock.

(She really needed to make it harder for him to get into her apartment, there were a lot of pictures of him in her apartment. She had not been back in days and he’d always manage to get flowers or scotch or straight moonshine squirreled away for the few hours she had when she returned.)

Him, holding a bag of takeout ramen wearing nothing but a “Kiss the Cook” apron and a cocky smirk.

Whipped cream dribbling down his bare chest, a handle of scotch in his hand, legs spread wide, pants undone, the lights of the club flashing over his body, the hands of other Guardians…or just people, petting down his shoulders and arms, the slightly vacant stare of someone _incredibly_ drunk, the languor of someone who was confident they were the hottest thing you had ever seen.

It was _hard_ not to message him something equally as saucy back, but Squall really did need to focus. Her work was important to her, and to Ikora, and if they were right about what they could do, there was a fascinating paradigm that was about to shift. She saved every single picture though, and had to keep herself, really, really had to keep herself from…sending just a barrage of her own back.

But if she started, she would not stop. And she really, really needed to focus.

Days slid away from her in the haze of research and development, and the Light trickled back in, filling the gaps in her flesh and armor as she and Ikora worked for the solution. Lask pinged, over and over again, with messages from her Fireteam that she responded to in short, terse tones, trying to impress upon them that she was working and she had not abandoned them, she just needed some time. And then all the messages from Cayde.

Just so many messages from Cayde.

Cheeky bastard would send them as she stood at the Vanguard’s table in a conversation with Ikora, smirking as Lask pinged and Squall did her best not to blush. She finished her conversation, shot Cayde a heated look that he pretended not to notice, and then went back to her work, sweeping out of the room with her head held high and pulse racing.

She knew he knew that she read and looked at every message. After a certain point, that became the game. He knew she looked at everything and responded to nothing. Cayde upped the ante, he had to. He wanted her attention, he wanted her to look at him, and he knew she was, but she wasn’t reacting and he wanted that reaction.

Fine then.

Videos of him masturbating, frotting desperately with her name falling out of his mouth, back arching, body moving.

It was the only time he even saw the hinting of a reaction from her, when an alert came up that she was working on a response, before it vanished and he was left staring at nothing. Just a string of messages from him with no responses.

Squall really, _really_ needed to focus but goddamn. Holy hell. Fuck.

Preparation was important, being ready for what was about to come up was really vital to what she wanted to do, but it would be a goddamn lie to say that she didn’t watch the videos and look over the pictures more than was, perhaps, entirely necessary. Cayde-6 was a _divinely_ constructed Exo. Built for war and sex and brutality and sensuality, and he knew it and she knew it.

As soon as she was done with her work, she was absolutely going to rock that man’s world. He’d walk funny for a fucking _week_ when she got through with him.

The thoughts bolstered her as she got in her ship for what _should_ be the last time before she could end her self-started sequestering and finally get back to doing what she really wanted to be doing.

Just in case it wasn’t clear, that was Cayde-6. She wanted to be fucking Cayde-6 halfway to next Monday, wanted this stupid sexy Hunter beneath her, on top of her, beside her, behind her, and if she had to travel out to Mars on a whim and a prayer and the hope that this was all correct and that she _was_ about to become something _more_ in order to finally get back to where she wanted to be, well then that was exactly what she was going to do.

And she did.

* * *

HARMONY WITHIN. HURRICANE WITHOUT.

\----

THE ONCOMING STORM.

* * *

 

“So, any word on our intrepid little Warlock? Didn’t she get sent out to Mars, I dunno, three days ago?” Cayde asked, just super casually, not at all super interested or wanting to hear what had happened because Squall had gone dark.

“Two weeks,” Ikora snapped, correcting Cayde immediately, looking up from her work, brows drawn together.

The last thing Ikora had heard was Squall terminating their link with a stunned, nearly reverent: “I know” as Arc energy burned the air around her. Ikora had had the line open for all the Vanguard to listen in on, and after Squall had dropped the line, she had done a poor job of keeping her worry from showing. Days had passed in stony silence, with Ikora slowly working on her own projects.

“Two weeks? Isn’t that worrisome?” he asked, trying to look casual. Just super casual. So casual.

Ikora looked up at Cayde, her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. She still had not tried to talk to him about whatever it was that he and Squall were doing, and he really did not want to start that conversation, but that did not keep him from wanting to know where the hell Squall was and why it was taking so long.

“She’s gone _dark_ , Cayde, I couldn’t tell you even if it was your business. Her Fireteam went out to her last known location and found nothing except scorch marks and Vex husks.”

Yeah, he knew that, he had _perhaps_ had one of his Hunters give him a copy of the report that they had submitted to Ikora and had spent about four hours reading it over and over and over again, trying to tease out any sort of further information than what was written that he could use to send a _second_ team out there to find her.

“Nothin’ from the Hidden?”

“No.”

He knew that tone. Ikora wanted him to shut up.  Generally, he would listen to the not at all subtle hint that she wanted him to stop pushing on the topic and come back to it later, but it was _Squall_ and he was…worried.

His foot started bouncing nervously, too much energy building up as he tried so, so hard to keep his emotions under control and not start grilling her for more information. Ikora probably didn’t have any more information than what she was saying, and he knew that, but it wasn’t enough, he didn’t know and he _wanted_ to.

Ikora took a deep, stabilizing breath and looked down at the mess of tablets and information in front of her. There was work to do and as worried as she was for the one Guardian who had gone missing, she could not let it distract her from the other Guardians under her command that also needed to be guided. Cayde’s leg bounced, and his arms crossed as he tried to get his brain-chips to focus back on the many, many tasks at hand.

One of the glories, and the faults of being an Exo was that he could truly multi-task within his own mind. He could worry and obsess over Squall and _also_ do his job!

It was great!

He hated this!

The meeting was over long. They always were. Meetings took forever and a goddamn day and as much as they were important Cayde wanted to know where Squall was and what the hell had happened to her.

His plates itched.

Shifting, he looked to Zavala who was droning on about something relating to Vanguard operations, a Strike or some such that he was planning with the team that had imprisoned Skolas. Right, he knew that team, his Hunter was on it. Balanced Fireteam that one. One Hunter, one Titan, one Warlock who wasn’t Squall.

Ikora edged from foot to foot, shifting her weight and turning her head just so. Cayde caught the motion out of the corner of his eye, and something about it pinged _wrong_ to him. The Warlock Vanguard was generally the most publically stoic of the three of them, standing perfectly still, balanced as if she was standing on a razor’s edge and unwilling to allow gravity the pleasure of seeing her fall.

The itching got…staticky. A good sort of staticky. A pleasant static. A really…weirdly…good –

There was a thunderclap, a surge of Arc energy that had his crotch plate springing open and his cock _throbbing_. He blinked, crumpling forward, catching himself on the table in front of him. A ratcheting, bitten-back moan ripped out of his throat, which, thankfully was covered by the boom of thunder and crack of Arc energy.

Squall stormed in, the air around her alight with Arc energy. Her pupils were blown out wide and there was a manic grin plastered across her face. Electricity haloed her head, pulling her hair up on end. Her eyes locked with Cayde’s and for a brief, glorious, chest-wrenching moment, everything in him was lit up. It was only centuries of training that kept him from collapsing into a heap of orgasming Exo on the floor.

No, instead, he quietly covered his mouth with one hand and willed his plates closed as he did his level best to keep control over his body.

“Warlock!” Zavala shouted, looking around at all of the civilians who worked with the Vanguard in their Operations room. A couple of them, both exos, were not-so-casually gripping the nearest firm and upright object to keep themselves on their feet.

“It’s _harmless_ , calm yourself,” she growled, her voice gravelly, rough from disuse or overuse, waving a hand dismissively.

Ikora was doing her best to look furious, but when Cayde met her eye, he saw the all-too-familiar spark of Warlock-Insanity and excitement. She was _happy_ with this. Not just having Squall back, but proof of something ridiculous that Warlocks did best.

“So, your report, Squall.”

It was impossible to ignore the excitement in Ikora’s voice. Whatever it was that Squall had been sent to do had been dangerous, but clearly, clearly, so very worth it. Or at least, Ikora thought it was.

Squall’s grin was wide. Excited.

“As expected. The storm was working into something massive. The Vex were looking at harnessing the Arc energy into something horrible, I’m sure, but…the storm liked me better,” she said with a shrug.

Lightning peeled off of her shoulder, buzzing loudly, ominously, before snapping to the ground next to her. She didn’t even flinch.

“What happened? Were the calculations correct, did we – was it everything we thought it could be?”

The grin on Squall’s face grew wider. Manic.  Madness.

“It was agony. Ecstasy. Everything. Nothing. The lightning hit me and I forgot everything. I saw everything. I felt nothing as all my nerves burned away. I _understood_. And then I rode the lightning down, pulled the Arc-Light to my whim and made the world around me **_scream_**.”

Squall went on in her report, and Cayde was having a bitch of a time not rushing her and pulling her back to her room. Pulses of Arc-Light poured from her skin, and every time, he could feel his sensors light up like a fucking Dawning Tree. He completely shut down his vocal processors, trying to do his best to look stern and resolute as he rested both of his palms on the table in front of him and bowed his head.

He just had to keep himself in check. It took a goodly part of the majority of his mental fortitude to force his cock down and plates back closed, but it would do him no favors for Ikora to see his raging hardon at the sight and sensation of one of her Warlocks. They’d avoided the conversation that Ikora really wanted to have, by virtue of Cayde just leaving the room whenever it came up, or looked like it could come up.

The command of diction Squall had was not helping him.

She talked of the power she commanded, the way it ripped through her, left her gasping, the every sensation of having her control stripped away at the same time she was utterly in control, the raw, unrelenting, earth-breaking, heart-stopping _power_ she had commanded. Arc-Light warped around her, flickering from one hand to the other as she spoke.

“There was an error in one of the circles we had designed here, something easy to fix in the field, I could feel the error and adjusted course accordingly. There was… _something_ in the pressure of it all, something in the divinity and profanity of it that tore any plans I had out of me. It was instinct. Cold, calculating instinct. Ravenous, overwhelming instinct. All of it, all at once. I…” she paused, looking for words.

Cayde felt a jolt of arc-energy race up his leg and pulsed, just once, directly against his cock-plates. He was so, so glad he had turned off his vocal processors because when his mouth opened to scream in ungodly pleasure, nothing came out. His eyes flicked shut as he tried to ride out the staticky shocks that teased and taunted his every inch. Carefully, he made it look like a yawn, which, thankfully, he had been known to do during Warlock reports before.

Jerking his head to the side he glared _daggers_ at Squall, who, somehow, managed to find the time in her report to spike him a glance. Her eyes were electric blue, sparking with Arc-light, and her wry, cocksure grin was coupled with another heady pulse of Arc energy up his leg and into his gut. Fuck if that wasn’t the hottest goddamn thing that had happened to him in the past five minutes, with the close second being that _entrance_.

Her eyes tore away from him, leaving him feeling actually acutely unbalanced, and her report continued.

Oh, if she didn’t show up in his bed as _soon_ as Vanguard operations were over, he was going to have to just go **Hunt** her down and beg her for the pleasure of her attention and touch.

Wait.

Wrong way round.

“And your delay? Going dark like that on such a lack of notice is cause for concern, if not reprimand.”

“I had business,” Squall said sharply, her spine straightening and the languor snapping out of her.

“With whom?” asked Zavala, cutting in to Ikora’s attempt to ask the same thing.

Cayde was really still just trying to focus on the constant humming buzz of electric Arc energy down the seam of the plates that kept his cock tucked away for propriety’s sake. Also it made it harder for someone to kick him in the dick. A leg up Exos had on organics with penises. As it was, he was focusing more on the fact that his cock was hard, with nowhere to go, and his plates were uncomfortably arousingly vibrating against him.

“The Reef,” Squall snarled.

The buzzing on his plates intensified and Cayde nearly dropped to his knees. This was a lot. This was so very, very much. His chest whined, but the room was too full of Squall’s Light for it to be heard. He was incredibly grateful for that because it was an embarrassing sound. His hips made an ineffective jerk against the press of Arc-Light on his hips and stomach and the only reward he got was Ikora, next to him, clearing her throat and putting a stabilizing hand on his shoulder. Of course Ikora had noticed.

He was an Exo. Arc-Light _did_ stuff to him, alright?

There was a snap and she pulled her hand away, a small Arc-burn on her palm. Cayde shuddered, Zavala didn’t notice, too busy trying to grill Squall for information about what it was that she had been doing out in the Reef, with no backup, without alerting the Vanguard or anyone else to her intentions or location. Squall gave nothing to Zavala, snarling and sneering when he pushed for information he had no right to demand.

The Arc-energy only intensified as her emotions did, leaving Cayde to only focus on not cumming inside his plates. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do _anything_ except gasp for air. He didn’t even need to breathe, but the sensation was the same. He had to do something, try and move, try and get anywhere else but in the same room as Squall because he was not well-known for his self control and she was already taxing it to the extreme.

“What business do you have on the Reef?”

“My business. None of yours.”

Exos processed sight so, so much faster than organics could. With all of the trillions of calculations and observations they made in a single moment, they could notice things that happened in microscopic moments of movements. He had watched lightning strike before, and had seen the moments that organic eyes were just not fine tuned enough to see.

So when there was a rumble of low thunder, he managed to see what Ikora and Zavala couldn’t. Squall flicked into existence in front of him, mouth quirked in a teasing grin, robes gaping open, her hands sliding down his chest, a single finger tracing the aching line of his crotch-plates’ seam, pulsing hard, just once, and he _felt_ the control of those plates get wrested out of his systems, sealing shut and _buzzing_ against his cock. In between that and his next blink, she was gone.

It had happened in microseconds. He’d think that he had imagined all of it, except that the place where she had touched, his body still vibrated with Arc-Light. Slowly, he turned to Squall, who was embroiled in her argument with Zavala. She hadn’t even stopped, there’d not even been a hiccup in her voice as she had spoke, just the thunder and the flash of a Warlock with a Cheshire-cat grin. Her eyes did not scan back towards him, but there was an echo of that Cheshire grin on her lips and he _burned_ for her.

“Zavala, I will discuss it with her in private. There is nowhere else for this conversation to go between the two of you,” Ikora said carefully, staring Squall down as she tried to get the Vanguard leader to stop questioning her Warlock long enough for said Warlock to talk to her about what it was that she had been doing.

Zavala looked only the slightest bit soothed by this, still ready to give Squall a dressing down. A Guardian who had done something impossible, nearly killed herself twice for a fireteam that wasn’t hers on a madcap rescue mission no one assigned her to, and then vanished for multiple weeks with no word only to come back into the Tower in a storm of vengeance? It was not proper and it would give the younger Guardians the wrong idea.

Ikora knew all of this but she also knew that whatever Squall had been doing was less important to the Vanguard as a whole than having _Stormcallers_ back. Not to mention how great it was that _Squall_ was a Stormcaller. Delicious wordplay at its finest.

“Thank you, Ikora. Report now, or later?”

“Later. Dismissed. Take time to…discharge a bit before returning to regular fieldwork.”

Squall laughed, and there was fucking _static_ in her voice now. Arc-Energy vibrating against her vocal chords in a way that made Cayde shake. She left as she had came, in a whirlwind of Light and sound.

Cayde pressed the knuckles of hand against the table, leaning against it, trying to center himself with the distraction of discomfort. It really didn’t work. He couldn’t get his eyes to focus, they were alternating between flickering out of focus and rolling as the after-shocks of the Arc-energy rolled through him. Feeling his sensors light up, go dim, and then light up _even harder_ was a dizzyingly good feeling.

“Cayde, do you -?”

“Need t-ten? Thought-kt you’d-kt never ask-t,” he mumbled, standing straight and turning to leave the room immediately.

A transmat had never felt so good or so very well deserved, as he staggered out of it, blessedly alone in the back of the hangar. He just needed some time to let the static build-up discharge and then he could get back to his many many meetings before he could find Squall and see about having a good time with her new Light.

He leaned up against the cool, shaded concrete, listening carefully for the sounds of anyone near him. There was no one. There rarely ever was anyone back in this corner for any number of reasons. Right now, he needed there to not be anyone back here because he needed a moment between himself, his hand, and his cock.

Yeah it wasn’t proper for the Hunter Vanguard, but what sort of man could take seeing a Guardian like that, lit up in Arc-Light, taunted and teased and on the edge of their own sanity without doing something about it?

He grappled with his buckle for a moment too long – an errant shock of Arc-Light making his spine arch and a staticky moan rip out of his mouth. There was not really the time or setup for anything nice and long and drawn-out, it was going to have to be a filthy, messy, probably shameful for most people jerk in the middle of the day just so he could fucking _focus_ for a little bit.

With the familiarity of a man who had done this a thousand times, he ran his thumb down the seam of his crotch-plates.

Now, generally, that move was the start to some pretty sweet self-lovin’, and Cayde was definitely in the mood for it – he could feel his cock throbbing from behind the protection of the plates, just waiting for the moment to spring free and let him get down to it.

However.

That did not happen.

A wave of Arc-Light washed over his body, spreading out from his hips, down to his knees and up to his chest, a tingling wave of arousal and _need_ echoing after. No shift in his plates though, which was fucking maddening and overwhelming. To say he wanted to masturbate was one thing. But this was graduating to a full-blown mindlessness of aching want and he did not understand why his plates weren’t **fucking** cooperating with him.

His Ghost pinged, a message coming in.

“Not-kt _now_ ,” he grit out, hitting the back of his head against the concrete wall behind him as he tried to work through his subprocesses to figure out which one was on the fritz and how to fucking fix it so he could take this goddamn edge off.

“Squall sent it.”

This better not be Warlock bullshit.

“Shit-t-tking hell. Yeah, what-kts it?”

“Naugh-ty, naugh-ty Cayde, trying to touch himself while he’s on duty? We just _can’t_ have that…” came Squall’s taunting voice.

Yep, Warlock bullshit.

There was a linked-in pulse of Arc-energy through his gut and he doubled over with a broken, screeching groan. His cock was rock hard and pressing hard against the inside of his plates, leaking precum and making a rather…messy wetness start to build up in the small space his cock occupied when it wasn’t free of his plates, and between the hardness of his length not being able to spring free and let him relax. It was like a spring being wound tighter and tighter and if he didn’t get relief he was going to break something.

“Y-kt-ou, **_you_** , what-t-kt did you d-do?”

His fingers worried the seam of his plates, trying to see if he could coax the Arc-Light to dissipate so his plates would open. All he got was another harsh _pulse_ and a wave of desire so strong he felt his knee go weak. He pressed his shoulders back against the wall behind him, trying to stay on his feet and not collapse onto the ground. Gasping, he threw his head back and really, honestly, tried to get his plates open because he was going to actually lose any shred of sanity or decency if this kept up without reprieve.

“Oh? Turnabout is fair play, Hunter mine. I had to work distracted. Now you do.”

“Th-i-is is not-kt even-n r-remot-tk-ely fair-r-r-r.”

Fucking hells was it _hot_ though. Her Arc-Light held his plates closed, no matter how he thumbed or tugged at them, pulsing intermittently. He could _feel_ the slick he was oozing puddling inside of him. It was not a comfortable feeling. It was, however, decadent in its depravity and at the next pulse of Arc-Energy made him curse over-loud. A shudder wracked his spine and he heard Squall’s chuckle before she closed the line.

Leaving him standing, pants loose around his hips, thrusting against the air as his fingers toyed with the too-sensitive plates. If he could just get some fucking _relief_ he’d be able to think but his plates remained clamped shut, his cock remained as hard as the steel that formed the plates that kept it contained, and he felt more and more of the maddening slick building up. The feeling of the precum puddling and sliding and making everything _except_ the plates slippery…yeah, alright, it was really fucking hot but he wanted to fist his cock in his hands with all that wetness, not feel his cock pressing against all of his internal mechanics, rubbing and pulsing and sliding without any way to do anything about it.

It took pretty much every iota of self-restraint he had to pull his hand away from toying with the damnable plates that would not open. Zipping and buckling his pants took more control than he thought he had, and the pulse of Arc-Light that rocketed through him as soon as he straightened up had him sitting down on the floor _very_ quickly afterwards.

A repeating static click came out of his mouth and he’d be just super concerned with that if he wasn’t in the middle of wondering how close he could get to orgasm before he lost his mind. Sanity was a hard-won thing, and losing it in pleasure was one thing, but this was fuckin’ bullshit. She wasn’t even here to really make it stick, he was trapped with nowhere to go and nothing to do but just feel all this blissful desire and crap and if he had to beg, he would, but he really didn’t think he had to just yet.

He could get through this.

He was the fucking Hunter Vanguard. He could absolutely do this.

“Send a-a-a-a message t-kt-o Sq-q-quall. T-kt-tell he-r-r that-kt-tk-kt-onight-kt I’m g-ktunna fuckting find-dt her. I’m gunn-n-n-n-na findt her and-kt fuc-kt her.”

“Message sent.”

He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and stood. He had work to do. Really, truly, honestly, he had to go do some work. Pleasure ricocheting through his system was not enough of an excuse to call off work, as much as he did not want to do his work and as much as he really was not even sure that he _could_ work like this, there was a lot for him to do, and he did not necessarily have the resources to foist it off for another day.

Another pulse of Arc-energy through his entire frame made him momentarily reconsider his choice to go back to work. He couldn’t say he was suddenly sick but if he made himself _really_ scarce, maybe Zavala wouldn’t come looking for him right away and he could have some time to hunt Squall down. And if he found her, he could…yenno, probably do something to her. Something at all. Anything. He just wanted her.

“Get through your day, Cayde. Find me afterward. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Yeah okay. Fine. Fine yeah he could do this.

He hated and loved how much this turned him on. From frustration to blistering arousal, it was an easy switch to flip in him. Because Squall, for all her teasing and taunting and damnably entrancing everything, made good of her every promise. If she said it would be worth his while, it would be. And if she had worked him up _this_ much, the release was going to be insane.

If he didn’t go insane first, it would be a personal record. Because the last time she had taunted him, she had let him fuck her through a wall and he _still_ found himself masturbating to the memory more often than not. It had been a wall much like the one he was leaning up against right now, and her ass had been just _there_ and he had just…

His hips absentmindedly thrust into the air in front of him, and the only friction he could find was the tightening of his pants against his body. Not enough. But he felt more pre leak from his cock, and with his plates sealed, it just added to the hot, sticky, slickness inside him. That was a new sensation. An entirely new one and he was weak for new things.

Cayde straightened up and nodded to himself. He could do this. He could absolutely do this. With no problem, at all.

He took a step forward.

Arc energy pulsed _hard_ through his hips and gut.

The next step he took made the slick he was oozing inside the confines of his plates slosh, noticeably, with the movement. He was so sensitive he couldn’t help but feel it, and then, in the next moment, couldn’t help but stop and rock his hips. Experimentation. Delicious experimentation. The feeling made him dizzy. Walking was going to be so fucking hard.

Like his cock. Like his cock pushing against his plates, drenched in his own precum and slick, it was going to be hard to walk back to the Operations room and stand. His eyes rolled and he grinned at the thought. A whole day of doing this. It was agony. Sweet delicious agony. Delicious agony that was going to be foisted upon him because Squall was back and safe and sound and wanted to toy with him.

Cayde struck out, forcing himself to his usual cadence of walking, just so that he could feel his cock press against his plates, feel the Arc energy buzzing against his cock and the delirium of his own slick slop about inside his plates.

The more he walked, the better it felt, and the better it felt the less mad at Squall he was because he could put up with a _lot_ if he was promised that he was going to get to have some revenge afterwards. Or a reward. A reward for behaving so well. Revenge for being made to – arc pulse, hold on – made to fill his plates with his own precum and slick.

He strode back to his position at the table, Arc-pulses still coming intermittently, usually followed by a gush of pre from his poor, beleaguered, weeping cock, and Cayde went to work.

The beauty of an inorganic brain was that he could, now that he recognized he had to, put most of the arousal to the side. It was still overwhelming, and every pulse of Arc-energy made his eyes go a little crossed. His legs would tense, or his knee would bounce, but it was all the same things he would do in his day to day anyway, so it was nothing special and drew no special notice from Ikora or Zavala, who both only checked that he was not injured and had gotten most of the Arc energy build up out of him before going back to work.

Fuck, this was ridiculously hot.

Like wearing lingerie under his armor, feeling like he had a filthy dirty secret that was only just barely hidden from the world at large, Cayde had gone from feeling like he was going to lose control because he was so aroused to being _in_ control because he was so blisteringly aroused and no one knew. Shifting weight from one foot to another became a decadent, sloppy feeling as he felt all of the slick and precum in his body shift with him.

The intermittent pulses were the best-worst, worst-best part of it, because the Arc-energy would linger in the slick he had produced, buzzing against his cock for a few seconds longer than the pulse lasted. Which of course made him leak more into the enclosed area, which made the next pulse linger longer, which made _more_ leak out and made the pulse last _longer_.

By the fucking _Light_ , when he finally got to cum, goddamn he was going to be insensate for a solid hour. All this buildup was starting to make places _deeper_ in his hips ache with over-fullness. Fuck was Squall in for a messy, messy night. Getting used to this sort of play was fun, now that he had a handle on it. He didn’t really need to even do anything, just stand and feel good.

This was. This was really good.

He shifted his weight again, trying to pay attention but it was getting more and more difficult to really keep any of his processes focused on work. Cayde shuddered, completely divorced from any sort of Arc energy. Just his body reacting to the building pressure as his plates got closer and closer to being completely full. His cock was throbbing hard, there was more slick than empty space in there.

Carefully, just super casually, he reached up to cover his mouth, biting at his glove for a moment, just for something to do to keep his hand from going down to toy with his belt buckle, just to have his hand _near_ that slit in his plates. It would feel so good if he could just goddamn get his relief.

A message pinged just loud enough to get his attention and a voice whispered in his ear as an Arc-pulse ripped through his chest and hips: “ _Last one of those I can hold on you. Guess it’s on you to do now. Keep it up, I’ll make it worth your while. See ya._ ”

He felt his plates slacken immediately, the lack of an external force keeping them closed and the time it took for him to process that letting a flush of slick escape and slide down his thigh. Not enough to discolor his pants, thank fuck for dark clothes and his propensity for mostly water-resistant clothing, even when he was standing at the desk.

Cayde slammed his knuckles against the table in front of him, just a bit too hard to go unnoticed as, all at once, he had to divert _all_ of his processing power to keeping those plates shut against the press of his cock and the dripping of the slick. Because he couldn’t keep his plates completely closed. Not anymore.

He could keep them mostly closed but all the way? No. No chance in fuck. He was too worked up to do that, and Squall absolutely knew that and that was probably the point of this game.

A slow, steady drip oozed from between his now ever-so-slightly open plates and Cayde had never been happier that Exos couldn’t blush because all he had to do was remain quiet and there would be no one who would ever know anything had happened because if he was quiet, no one would hear him stutter.

Because Ikora and Zavala would absolutely know what his stuttering meant.

They would know and that would be a whole situation he had to handle about who had done this to him, why he was “disrespecting the Vanguard, blahblahblah” from Zavala and Ikora would definitely break whatever stony silence she had about he and Squall because she’d figure out only a Warlock could manage to do this, especially since, yenno, Squall _had_ been there not too long ago.

Alright yep, focus. Focus focus. He could focus. Just keep those plates as closed as possible. Keep the plates closed, no one finds out, find Squall, make her squeal. Just. A couple more hours.

 _Hours_.

Fuck hell.

He kept his composure as best he could, busying himself with looking as busy as possible so that no one would bother him, and if they did, he could be as short with them as possible and no one would question it because he was _clearly_ just _so busy_.

A not insignificant part of his mental process was being diverted to keeping those two plates closed. As much as he was not usually one for propriety or caring about such things, he really, truly, and honestly, did not want to cum in front of his friends and fireteam at the table like this. That, and  he wanted to know what it was that Squall had in store.

He preened under praise and doing a good job, and this – this was new and heart-stopping and glorious and he _needed_ to know what it was that she could promise him if he did what she was making him do. He could do this. It was…hard, it was very hard, he was not in the habit of denying himself anything, at all, ever, which was probably why Ikora and Zavala had to constantly watch him for shenanigans. But it…promised something new.

He could do this.

He could totally do this.

_Plip. Plip…plip._

His chest clicked nervously and he took a quick glance down. His slick had made it far enough down his leg that it was dripping out of the drain-vent in his boot. He hated having wet feet. Boot vents circumvented that, until he was the one making a drippy mess and the vent was venting his precum and slick onto the floor. He could hear it over the hubbub of the goings on of the world around him, but he doubted anyone else could.

Still, the pressure in his chest ratcheted up another few degrees and he felt his plates shift a little wider.

Which, of course made more slick slide down his leg. Which made the “plips” louder, and started the puddle next to his boot grow, little by little.

He blinked, clenched his jaw and checked the time. An hour until he could leave without any comment from Zavala or Ikora. Just one more hour of being so overwhelmingly aroused that he could barely think, let alone –

Yeah, no, he was leaving.

He wasn’t going to be able to hold on any more.

Cayde turned, taking only one step before Zavala spoke up.

“Where are you going? We are not done here yet, Cayde.”

Stopping his movement to turn back to face Zavala made the built-up slick slosh against all of his sensitive internal mechanisms again, made more slick drip down his leg, in thicker globs now, because he was losing what remained of his control. He opened his mouth, trying to think of literally anything to say that wouldn’t alert Zavala or, heavens forbid, Ikora, to what had been going down.

“Let him be, Zavala. His work is more or less done, and after being that close to Arc-energy unexpectedly, I’m sure he needs some time to himself. Squall was not gentle with her entrance. I will be talking to her about that when she’s calmed down a bit. Go on, Cayde, if there’s anything urgent, I’ll have it forwarded to you,” Ikora said smoothly, not looking up from the datapad in her hand.

Cayde had never loved anyone in the world so much as he loved Ikora in that moment.

He didn’t even bother responding, he just turned and left, walking as fast as he could, trying as _best_ he could to remain calm and not think about the little puddles he was leaving behind as he walked. He would apologize to the Frames who would have to clean that up later. Later, after he got –

“ _Found you_ ,” he heard, hissed from the side, before someone was pushing him into a dark corner in the morass of hallways of the Vanguard’s tower.

He would have tensed and stopped them, but Arc Light, soothing, beautiful, overwhelming Arc-Light washed over him.

Squall laughed when he melted into her arms, the way he mumbled her name like he was already drunk out of his mind, the cooing sound he made when her hands pulled on his belt and his hips hit hers. He trembled at her touch, his eyes rolling when her mouth made contact with the side of his neck.

“Please, please, please,” he whimpered as she pulsed Arc energy through him over and over and over again.

It was like he was orgasming but with his plates held shut – she was forcing them shut again – he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t even breathe for the crashing and crescendos he was being put through. This was nowhere near fair, but he was so very not complaining as she crowded him into the darkest corner, running hands covered in Arc-Light down his sides as she tugged his pants down and pressed her tongue flat against the seam of his plates.

She was so _cold_ and he was so _hot_ that Cayde couldn’t help the static yelp that ripped out of his voice-box. His head jerked upwards in a series of stuttering movements. Squall kept his plates closed against his every ounce of will, and then, on her knees, all but fucking made out with the barest opening she allowed his plates. His slick dripped off of her chin, and the excess still slid down his leg.

_Plip._

Cayde covered his mouth with both hands, trying to focus on cutting his vocal box’s power out, but with errant pulses of Arc-energy racing up his body that wasn’t exactly his choice. A surge would momentarily power up the vocal processor and there’d be a brief, rasping, breathless – “ _Pleas-s-skt-e!_ ” – or moan, or whimper that broke through before the power faded and he was mute again.

Squall fanned her hands across his hips, pushing them back against the wall holding him steady. With her Light back, she could hold him _up_ , which she definitely needed to do because his knees were both wobbling something fierce.

Her thumbs pressed to either side of his plates, holding them in place as her tongue pushed in between them.

He was gunna fucking _die_ if she kept this up.

His plates slid open at Squall’s whim and his cock slid immediately out of the wet, overheated place behind his plates, into her mouth and down her throat. It was all one long, single movement and Cayde redacted his previous statement.

He was gunna fucking die if she ever _stopped_.

Cock free, pressure gone and a Warlock on her knees in front of him, and nothing else happening that could keep him from it, Cayde came. And came.

And came again.

Eyes rolling up to the back of his head, he wasn’t even aware enough to thrust his hips. He didn’t need to. After being keyed up that hard for that long, cumming was the easiest thing. The overload, the melt down, the way his Light rose and was beat back by her Light, all of it was just so much, but so, so good.

When he thought the comedown would come (hah), instead, Squall took it upon herself to slo-o-owly pull herself off his cock, and then dive back in, one hand closing around his cock and pulsing Arc-energy again, while her mouth worked at cleaning out the place behind his plates, flicking in to clean all the slick and pre away. The sounds were…ungodly sensual.

That Arc-hand wasn’t making things easier. She jerked him off idly as her tongue did filthy work inside his plates. Pulsing in time with the absent thrusts he made against her hand, the Arc energy lit all of his sensors up in a delirium of cascading feeling. Too much. It was too much, so much all at once and so soon again that he couldn’t –

“Sk-Squall, plea-u _hhhnnnkt_ pleaske? Pleas-kt-se???”

He didn’t even know what the fuck he wanted.

She laughed, her voice the roll of thunder. Arc-energy rumbled around them both. Cayde tried to curse but his voice cut out and instead he was left trying to scramble and get her to stand up out of the mess of his slick and precum that had drenched the floor under him. She didn’t.

Her eyes flicked up to his and the Arc-splinters that reflected against the silver of her iris only accentuated how _dark_ the blue near her pupil was and Cayde was a regular guy with regular needs and wants and desires, and seeing a beautiful Guardian, on their knees, mouth dripping his own cum and slick in front of him was just. It was a lot. It was a lot, okay?

Squall gently, carefully, pushed his plates back closed, and pressed her mouth against the seam of his plates once again.

He caught on moments too late.

“No – n-n-no! N-n-otkt this, c-c’mon. J-jus-t-kt-t a li-t-t-tle more-kt.”

She was pulling away, wiping his slick off her mouth , pulling his pants back up around his hips, deftly doing his belt buckle back up. When she swept in for a kiss, Cayde halfway thought about turning away until she undid whatever it was that she insisted upon continuing to do to him. It was a stupid thought.

He kissed her hard, turning her, pushing her up against the wall he had been pinned against, Arc-energy pulsing through him. Through her. Squall laughed against his mouth , wrapping her hands around the back of his neck, pulling him _harder_ against her, urging _more_ from him, begging him with everything but words to go, take, _consume_.

Cayde tore her robes open, well and truly tore them, digging his fingers into the material and ripping into it. She gasped, but his mouth was on her neck too fast for her to do anything else, Solar-Light burning her skin. Her head snapped back against the concrete and a screaming moan tore out of her chest. His plates were held shut, he couldn’t do anything except, delirious from overstimulation, try and touch all of her at the same time.

There was the buzz of transmat. Either he did it or she did.

He was dumped on his back onto – yeah, this was his bed, Squall didn’t have the transmat coordinates for his personal bedroom. Only –

Sundance chimed, spinning out of his side.

“Ikora says you two were being a little too loud.”

Cayde would really super care way, so much more, if Squall wasn’t pressing teeth and tongue and Arc-Light against his chest. She returned his favor, tearing his shirt. He’d pay someone to fix it, right now he was underneath a _Stormcaller_ a fucking _Stormcaller,_ a Warlock class of legend and lost promises and it was Squall, of all people, who reached into the Arc and came out with it bending knee to her.

His plates didn’t move, but Squall really didn’t need that. She groaned, jerking her hips against his, her fingers digging into his plates, teeth biting at his throat. Arc energy followed her every move, overwhelming him. He wasn’t anything but a toy, anything but a vehicle for her pleasure. There was nothing he could think of doing than trying to get his hands on her body, to strip her out of her clothes.

How long had it been since he had actually taken someone else’s clothes off, felt seams rip beneath his hands, the surprised gasp from them, the way his hands met organic flesh after having _won_ the right to touch it from the cover of their clothes?

Too long, he decided.

Squall gave as good as he did, tearing at everything except his cloak until he was lying, in tatters, beneath her. He tore her pants open, giving himself access to her deliciously wet, dripping like he had been, slit. Cayde slipped his fingers inside of her immediately, not needing or wanting to take any more time than they had already in getting down to business.

She drove herself back down against his fingers and he choked on some very choice words. His hands were sensitive, alright? He was a Hunter, all of his senses were heightened and excessively so and doubly exceptionally so when he was being bombarded with Arc-energy. All of this was being recorded in some back part of his memory, but really, really truly honestly, he  could spend the rest of forever like this.

“C-kt-ould fuck-t you bet-t-t-ter with-th my coc-kt ou-u-ut,” Cayde grit out as Squall fucked his fingers with wild abandon.

His cock was hard and heavy and pressing against his still closed plates as he again, started making just a fuck of a goddamn mess in there. Cleaning that out was going to fucking suck but right now he wanted –

“Point, granted,” Squall grunted.

His plates sprang open, Arc energy went everywhere, and Squall sank onto his cock with a pleased moan. Cayde wasn’t certain if he’d ever been more aroused in his life, but it didn’t matter anymore because Squall was riding him. His whole body rolled underneath her, his hands atop her thighs, holding her in place, holding her down, so he could just fuck her utterly sideways. Her body rocked atop his, wracked with the same pulses of Arc-Light that was lighting him up. Hot, wet, sticky, slick, they moved against each other, lost in blistering pleasure and unending ecstasy. 

She paused for only a moment, riding a high of her orgasm atop him, incapable of drawing breath, twitching as Cayde emptied himself into her. He could feel his body preparing for the next round immediately, there was no time between his highs because the Arc-Light would give him no rest. She demanded, she made him obey and he would not have this any other way.

"Want-kt mor-r-r-e?"

"Yes. More. _Now_. Give it to me!"

And he did.

And she did.

And Cayde-6 had a stammer for the next four days.

 

 

The Frames in charge of cleaning the Tower had a few incidental puddles to clean up in odd places. Perhaps there was a leak? They brought it up to Ikora, who waved them off without a worry and said she would look into it herself. The grin on her face was something else. But their jobs weren’t to ask questions. Just to clean. So they did.


End file.
